A Model to Determine and Improve an Organisation’s Configuration Management Capability

Abstract

This master thesis has enhanced the field of configuration management by developing a model that can evaluate an organisations configuration management capability. It also verifies that the already existing theory in the field of configuration management is applicable in industries where the main goal is to preserve and develop the operational capability of its assets. Solvina AB is a consultancy firm mainly working with clients in this industry. As a part of their service range, they advise clients in how to optimise their configuration management implementations to increase long-term operational capability and reduce project costs. This has become important for their clients in today’s global market as companies are continuously forced to increase operational eectiveness and eciency as markets grow more competitive. However, Solvina experiences dif- ficulties as there exist no formal evaluation process to evaluate the configuration management capability and identify improvement areas in these industries. Based on this background, this master thesis has firstly identified ten factors that are important to operate an ecient and eective configuration management. Based on these factors, an evaluation model has been developed. The model is simply a structured collection of activities that an organisation’s configuration management implementation can be expected to include in order to be successful. It can identify an organisation’s current configuration management capability and improvement areas. The model’s design and structure is based on the ability to vary the depth of the analysis to make it a useful tool for all organisations in the industry, independent on size and available resources. As future work, it is recommended that the model is further verified both with the practitioners of it and multiple interviewees to increase the granularity and reach the full potential of the model. Additionally, the data collection method needs to be further developed due to the barrier between the configuration management terminology and the industry terminology.