CMII Blog

Want to share your experience regarding Requirements Management, Configuration Management and/or Product Change Management?

Want to share your experience regarding PLM/ALM and how it relates to CM?

Want to share your experience using principles of the CMII Standard for process improvement?

Want to share your experience in reducing corrective action?

If you would like to speak at the CMII Europe 2011 in Stuttgart you should send in your abstract until May 13, 2011.

More information is available in the Call for Speakers flyer. For submission use the Submission form.

More information available at http://www.cmconference.com.

With the term "R² Initiative" GfKM CMII Europe – Center of Expertise for Cost Avoidance – is starting the year 2011 with an initiative for cost avoidance thru reducing the re-work/corrective actions in businesses.

In the opinion of business experts the crisis is over and businesses will be profitable again in 2011, this is the good news. But are we equipping ourselves for the next crisis?

"Larger turnover, higher market share, amalgamations, innovations" are the typical business goals for the coming years, which themselves partly depend on the market and therefore lie beyond our sphere of influence.

With this R² Initiative, GfKM is going in another direction with its customers: More profit and business stability by cost avoidance with the aim of "efficiency improvement by process improvement".

For more information on this unique initiative and to download your personal copy of the R² White Paper (English Issue or German Issue) with step by step instructions go to the GfKM web site at http://www.gfkm.de.

This Practical CM Course, taught for the first time in Germany, reflects the big interest in "traditional CM".

After a short introduction of the 15 attendees (job, work, expectation etc.) Carol and the group worked out the "My Rules"/"Your Rules" which did lead as a "basic common understanding" for the whole 3 days. This tiny but solid grounding should be used at every single meeting, conference, training etc. to avoid those tons of unnecessary and unstructured discussions ;-).

The first theoretical part was the explanation of promoting and understanding the basic concepts of configuration management discipline in a logical and sequential manner: Configuration - Identification /Change / Status Accounting / Verification & Audit / Planning & Management.

The course aproach that CM is relying on the teamwork of all project participants led to the forming of 4 teams to work through the practical exercises.
The posted Life Cycle Phases - Concept /Design / Development / Industrialisation / Manufacture / Operational / Phase-Out & Disposal and the corresponding documentation - RSBL / ABS / PBL / MBL / OSBL / POBL helped to understand the phase of each single step of the practical exercises.

The practical work: Configuration Identification / Configuration Control / Status Accounting / System and Physical Audits have been based and exercised on a "live" spaceship as a "real" physical product with practical requirements. This led the team to work in a realistic (practical) environment and gave them the possibility to always translate the exercise to their day to day work.

The Practical CM course was finished by a 35 examination questionnaire, reflecting the complete stuff learned and exercised within the 3 days.

The feedback from the participants have been very positive (see attached Course Assessments ).

GfKM will offer this Practical CM Course in 2011 in different European countries.