Precedence was given to definitions found in the Software Engineering Institute's key practices of the Capability Maturity Model. In many cases, there is a lack of universal agreement among definitions in the literature on configuration management. The emphasis herein is on software, although many of the terms also apply to hardware and firmware. For example, see configuration audit and software baseline audit. A description of how and why a revision of an item differs from its predecessors.
Control changes to configuration items and their related documentation.
Record and report information needed to manage configuration items effectively, including the status of proposed changes and implementation status of approved changes. The four key elements of configuration management are Configuration identification. Configuration status accounting. Forward deltas store the oldest version in its entirety and later versions as deltas. Reverse deltas store the most recent version in its entirety and previous versions as deltas.