Context based configuration management

The commercial state-of-the-art tools for configuration managements (CM) systems are very mature for asset, hardware and software development systems. These tools are very good for tactical management for daily issues. However, strategic management and decisions also have a requirement for configuration management but unfortunately the traditional commercial off the shelf (COTS) tools are not adequate for those requirements. Using shortcomings as requirements drives our team has developed a hybrid tool-suite that directly supports the dynamic, distributed strategic planning and decision making environments. The context based configuration management (CBCM) system marries decision map technology with COTS configuration management work flow (Xerox Docushare), embedded component models (events models, configuration item models, and feedback models) all on top of a web based online collaboration technology (NASA/Xerox Netmark (Maluf, 2004) middleware engine). This paper documents the rapid prototype that has been developed to meet those requirements using this design and highlight the initial pilot results at NASA Headquarters with the Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate