The Configuration Management Specialist Group conference

The BCS CMSG conference this year is on 10th June 2014—and is sponsored by Xebia Labs, Serena, Perforce, Derive Logic and the ITAM Review.

This year, the conference looks to the future—with a view of emerging transition processes and activities from ITIL author and ITSM thought leader Stuart Rance. Rance will talk about ‘How’ to do progressive service releases; but also about ‘Why’ (looking at the value of these processes and at how to communicate that effectively).

There is sometimes controversy on whether Configuration Management is necessary; surely, Change Management is enough? Well, that depends, in part, on how you define these terms. Conventionally, Configuration Management includes relationships between configuration items—those things needed to deliver a business service—while Change Management just ensures that a particular change set completes OK; but the distinction is an interesting basis for (well-informed) argument. At the CMSG conference, itSMF’s own Transition SIG Chair, Richard Horton, will be presenting on how to ‘DO’ Change Management, providing us with the benefit of his years of experience in the field. This will be followed up by CMSG’s Chair, Richard Josey, who will be leading a workshop style discussion covering the key decision points in building Change processes and aligning them to the needs of an organization.