Software Engineering

275
Software Engineering. DOI: 
© 
2012
 Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
2013
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-407768-3.00016-1
Software Control Practice
16
CHAPTER 
CHAPTER OUTLINE
16.1  Configuration administration ............................................................................ 277
16.1.1
  Identify architectural elements .................................................... 277
16.1.2
  Maintain architectural status ....................................................... 278
16.2  Process engineering change packages ............................................................ 279
16.2.1
  Record engineering change requests and proposals ....................... 279
16.2.2  Prepare change evaluation packages ............................................ 279
16.3  Change evaluation .......................................................................................... 281
16.3.1
  Assess change technical merits ................................................... 281
16.3.2
  Assess architectural consequences............................................... 282
16.3.3
  Assess technical work package consequences ............................... 282
16.3.4
  Assess technical plan consequences ............................................ 283
16.4  Change assimilation ........................................................................................ 283
16.4.1
  Publish change notification package ............................................ 283
16.4.2
  Audit the architectural change progress ........................................ 284
16.4.3
  Appraise the project situation ...................................................... 284
16.5  Software repository control .............................................................................. 284
16.5.1
  Maintain engineering artifact repository ........................................ 285
16.5.2
  Maintain change history repository ............................................... 285
16.5.3
  Maintain technical risk repository ................................................ 285
The software control practice involves a set of tasks intended to provide stability 
of the software engineering effort, product configuration, and change processing. 
These tasks represent the technical version of configuration management and pro-
ject control tasks. This includes the assessment of the potential impact a change 
request or proposal may have on the software architecture, technical plans, and 
architectural design artifacts.
Software control tasks must maintain configuration records to provide traceabil-
ity among elements of the software architecture, design decision, change requests 
and proposals with stakeholder needs (
Figure 16.1
). Project-level configuration con-
trol is typically enforced at the software configuration item level of the software 
product configuration. Software control provides the configuration management 
oversight of the evolving software architecture. Therefore, software control tasks 

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