The cost of configuration management has three aspects: expenditure, people and
time.
In expenditure terms the cost is focused on the purchase of software to create a
configuration management database. At the sophisticated end of the scale it can
be costly to provide the dynamic functionality required to view relationships
between configuration items. It may also include aspects of the service desk,
change management, incident management, problem management and release
management. It takes some time to reach the point where this level of
sophistication is needed and we recommend that you do not purchase software at
this stage, but use the templates we have created for you to download. The
implementation guide and operations guide of each process refer to templates as
they are required. The templates are also grouped together in
Toolkit .
Configuration management requires full-time staff only if there is a large volume of
continuous change - usually only in large organisations. In a school you should be
able to allocate the roles and responsibilities to existing members of staff. Roles
and responsibilities are referred to throughout the Configuration Management
section and they are also grouped together in
roles and responsibilities.
The amount of time taken up by the Configuration Management process once it is
operational is difficult to quantify, as this will depend on the volume of changes in
your school. Spending time proactively on a configuration management database
and keeping it up to date can save time and effort spent later trying to track down
equipment or trying to understand the infrastructure. Proactive is better than
reactive!
Remember to allow time also for the implementation and integration of the process
into normal day-to-day activities. We have created a
table of activities to help you
plan the amount of time required.
