Configuration Management is a formal engineering discipline with established methods to maintain the integrity of a object throughout its life cycle. CM involves the application of four fundamental technical and administrative principles:

• Configuration Identification - To identify and document the functional and physical characteristics of items.
• Configuration Control - To control changes to the configuration of items and/or their related data and documentation.
• Configuration Status Accounting - To record and report the status of item identification and changes to items, data and documents.
• Configuration Verification - To verify item configuration and associated data and document integrity through audit.