Interviews

Participants were asked ten general questions about CM plans. The questions asked focused on issues such as how the plan should be organized, how the plan is used throughout the life cycle, and whether there are any significant differences between CM plans for various environments (e.g., development versus maintenance). The questions focused on the utility of CM plans today, and how to make better use of them in the future.

Summary of Results

• assistance in developing a plan (manual and automated)
• content of the plan
• how the plan is used
• the kinds of factors that would make plans differ in certain situations
• the value of writing a plan.

When asked if standards aided in the development of a CM plan, all respondents stated that they did. The primary reason for this belief was that the standards could be used as a guideline for the plan, providing the plan author with a starting point and some idea as to what must be addressed in the plan.

We next asked the respondents whether CM procedures should be part of the CM plan or be separate. This question was asked since this issue seems to be a moot point to CM planners. The overwhelming response was that the procedures should be kept separate from the plan, but that the plan should reference the procedures. While many reasons were cited for this position, the most common reasons were that separating the procedures allows the users to focus only on what applies to them, and makes maintenance of the procedures and plan much easier. Respondents also stated that procedures should focus on how to do something, whereas a plan should focus on what is to be done.

In discussing whether the CM plan should be updated throughout the project life cycle, most respondents stated that they felt it should. However, the respondents stated that updates should occur only when there are major structural or process changes. In general, the respondents stated that the plan did not require many updates because most of the changes occurred in the procedures, which were maintained separately.

Regarding the actual use of the CM plan, once developed, most respondents stated that the plan was primarily used during the initial software development stages to establish the process by which CM would be done. Once the process was established, the plan primarily sat on the shelf, and it was the procedures which were then used most heavily throughout the remainder of the project. Also regarding the use of the plan, the respondents stated that it was primarily used by the CM and QA organizations, while the procedures were used by all organizations.

The next question concerned the need for a CM plan at the company or division level. Most respondents felt that there was a need for a plan at this higher level, in addition to the project level. However, they felt the plan at this higher level should be very generic, or perhaps just a standard upon which projects could build. This generic plan, or standard, should also include processes and methodologies endorsed by the company.

The next three questions dealt with needed differences in CM plans for development versus maintenance projects, hardware versus software, and large versus small projects. In all cases, the respondents felt that there were no significant differences. They stated that the plan is based on the CM methodology, which is the same regardless of what it is applied to. The major differences, they felt, would be in the procedures. However, the respondents did state that in the case of a large project, versus a small project, the plan may have to be a bit larger, because the project will typically be more complex and require more coordination. Yet, even in this case, the plan for both can be built using the same standard or guideline.

The final two questions dealt with the value in writing a CM plan, and the difficulty in writing the plan. Regarding the value of the plan, this is where we received the most variation in the answers. While all respondents felt it was valuable to write the plan, the degree of perceived value was different. Some respondents felt the CM plan was very valuable throughout the entire life cycle; others felt its primary value was at the beginning of the project, and once produced, had served its purpose. Regarding the difficulty in writing the plan, most respondents believed that the CM plan itself was not hard to write. They felt that the difficult part was in determining how to perform CM, and in determining what processes should be implemented. A few respondents did find the plan difficult to write, however, because it is hard to get input and cooperation from the software engineers and developers, and the timeline to write the plan is usually very short.

The Use of Automated Tools in Developing a CM Plan.

When asked what type of tool they would want, all respondents stated that a CM plan template would be desirable. Many software companies are now beginning to produce templates, not only for CM plans, but for all of the standard documents created on a project. Most of these automated templates are geared to specific standards such as DoD or NASA standards. The current template programs essentially provide a plan outline containing all of the section headings. In addition, several of the programs provide one or two sentences describing what should go into each section, much like the model outline of the CM plan. All the templates we have seen are easily tailorable, allowing a user to add, delete, or move sections around as they would in any word processing program. In fact, most of these templates have been implemented in word processing programs.

Analysis of Results

Concerning the content of the plan, the most "controversial" topic about CM procedures (which are the details of actually how to do the CM) was that they should not actually be part of the plan itself but rather a pointer to the procedures be placed in the plan. This leads to easier maintenance of the plan since it is likely that the procedures will change more often than other issues in the plan.

Perhaps a little surprising is that the CM plan does get used and needs to be updated. But then this reflects the key role that the plan plays in the CM solution. It is interesting to see that plans do not differ in their nature whether dealing with different phases of the lifecycle, hardware and software and between small and large projects (apart from size). This leads to the conclusion that given a comprehensive template for a CM plan it should be easy to write a good CM plan and that the template is the best way of starting to write a CM plan.

The fact that the CM plans were used confirms that it is worth the time and effort involved in writing a plan.

While we were not overly surprised by the answers to our questions it was interesting to see the amount of uniformity in answers. This indicated to us that while putting together a CM solution is complex, writing the actual CM plan which is crucial to the CM solution, is not overly difficult and there are aids to support it.