Project Management

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Change Management vs. Configuration Management

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JOONMIN SUH Project Engineering Manager| Samsung Construction & Trading Seongnam, Gyeonggi, South Korea
Change control is very critical to keep the baseline in project management.
However, what is the difference between these two CMs: Change Management and Configuration Management? And, it seems "Issue Management Procedure and Tools" are necessary to support the CMs, so please consider this in your answers.
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ATHANASIOS GKOLAS PMP - PMI-RMP-BIM Manager | OMITEM Consulting Engineers S.A Athens, Greece
According to the PMBOK Guide, Fifth Edition:
Configuration Control focuses on the specifications of both the deliverables and the processes.
Change Control is focused on identifying, documenting and controlling changes to the project and the project baselines.
A Change Management Plan documents how changes will be monitored and controlled.
A Configuration Management plan documents how configuration management will be performed.
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Jean-Marc Bonnasse Customer Project Manager| Nokia Saint-Germain Les Arpajon, France
Thus, you can bend your methods if necessary.
If you want flexibility for your projects, it's important to set an example! Trust feedback: the goal of Change Management is to enable each project to go through their own change process....
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Sante Delle-Vergini, PhD Senior Project Manager| Infosys Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
In my view they should differentiate the two a lot more in the PMBOK. It's one of the areas that often causes confusion.
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Sergio Luis Conte Helping to create solutions for everyone| Worldwide based Organizations Buenos Aires, Argentina
Configuration Management and Change Management are critical process to be defined at organizational level. Then, you have Project Configuration Management and Project Change Management as a subset of them. Configuration Management (generally speaking) is the environment needed to apply Change Management process to admin all changes related to the organization (or project). You can find more reading the PMI´s "Practice Standard for Project Configuration Management" or by getting the IEEE Standards into the web (this are better references).
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Stéphane Parent Self Employed / Semi-retired| Leader Maker Prince Edward Island, Canada
Configuration management's goal is to set and maintain consistency in your product(s). That means you always know what configuration items, and their version, are bundled together.

Change management is about managing changes against the project.and its product(s).
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1 reply by Vincent Guerard
Oct 25, 2017 9:01 PM
Vincent Guerard
...
Agree. That is the clear way to say it
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Alejandro Fernández Commissioning Manager| CAF (Construcción y Auxiliar de Ferrocarriles) Amstelveen, Netherlands
I am fully agree with Stéphane,

Configuration management impacts on product (project scope) while change management is related with project itself .
For example over spending must be monitored by change management but is nothing to do with configuration management as long as the scope remains the same.
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Vincent Guerard Coach - Trainer - Speaker - Advisor| Freelance Mont-Royal, Quebec, Canada
Oct 25, 2017 10:43 AM
Replying to Stéphane Parent
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Configuration management's goal is to set and maintain consistency in your product(s). That means you always know what configuration items, and their version, are bundled together.

Change management is about managing changes against the project.and its product(s).
Agree. That is the clear way to say it
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Vithal Parab Associate Consultant| Tata Consultancy Services Mumbai, Maharashtra, India
Configuration Management will be gathering information of all your available configurations as is, which called baseline. Any change after that will follow change management procedure. Change actually happens on Configuration Management and Configuration have to update accordingly after change.
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JOONMIN SUH Project Engineering Manager| Samsung Construction & Trading Seongnam, Gyeonggi, South Korea
Thanks all of the answers. I cleared the concept.

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