A common question from people wanting to introduce configuration management into their organisation is, “How do I sell configuration management?” By this they mean, how do I convince the decision maker in my organisation to invest in configuration management?
The short answer should be, “configuration management should sell itself.” After all, if configuration management offers real benefits to an organisation then it should be a simple case of presenting those benefits to the decision makers and they should immediately instigate a programme of work to implement configuration managements. Ah, if only it were that easy.
The fundamental problem faced when selling configuration management is that very few people really understand what it is, even fewer understand how it works and fewer still understand how to make it work in their organisation. Compounding this problem, there is no agreed definition of configuration management among practitioners. So, from this rather poor position we need to educate the audience before we can begin to sell the product. Read the rest of this entry ?
