Configuration Management Principles and Practice

Configuration , "to form from or after," derives from the Latin com- , meaning "with" or "together," and figurare , "to form." It also means "a relative arrangement of parts or elements." Configuration management therefore refers to managing a relative arrangement of parts or elements. It's as simple as that.

Configuration management, as we know it today, started in the late 1960s. In the 1970s, the American government developed a number of military standards, which included configuration management. Later, especially in the 1990s, many other standards and publications discussing configuration management have emerged.

In the last few years , the growing understanding of software development as a collection of interrelated processes has influenced work on configuration management. This means that configuration management is now also considered from a process point of view.