He possesses a deep understanding of methodologies such as PMBOK, Lean Six Sigma, and TQM to achieve business/technology alignment. With over 100 instructional training sessions and extensive experience as a PMP Exam Prep Instructor at KnowledgeHut, Kevin has a proven track record in project management training and consulting. His expertise has helped in driving successful project outcomes and fostering organizational growth. Configuration management was first brought into practice by the US defense industry as a means to track the changes and control the impact of such changes on the time, cost, scope, and quality of the project.
- This loss could have been avoided if the configuration status of the design description was known to the software developers.
- At a basic level, it enables the business to track revenue, expenses, assets, liabilities and shareholder equity, and manage cash flow and know whether customers have paid, and whether the company has paid its own bills.
- Financing activities include debt issuance, equity issuance, stock repurchases, loans, dividends paid, and repayments of debt.
- The second step creates configuration change management surveillance of the contractor’s activity.
Changes to CIs are tracked through various states, such as ordered, received, in acceptance test, live, under change, withdrawn, or disposed. The following are critical functions or attributes to consider if designing or purchasing software to assist with the task of managing configuration. Although the terms “accounting” and “bookkeeping” are sometimes used interchangeably, bookkeeping is just one function within the broad discipline of accounting. It’s also worth noting that while all CPAs are accountants, not all accountants are CPAs. In accounting, you’ll come across certain titles which appear to bear similar duties but actually have unique job descriptions.
We will cover this more in detail later in the post with a few financial dashboard examples. But before we delve any deeper, let’s consider who uses financial accounting reports. Accounting reports are essential to maintaining the financial health of your organization. They help track its evolution over time and identify opportunities to improve business transactions and cash flow, as well as support tax and legal requirements. The cash flow statement reconciles the income statement with the balance sheet in three major business activities.
What is configuration management?
Configuration management is a methodical,
systematic management control system that identifies physical and functional
characteristics, controls, and identifies and reports changes. The objective
of CM is to control and document the physical and functional characteristics of
the elements of a system to ensure that total system integrity is maintained. Configuration management is used to maintain an understanding of the status of complex assets with a view to maintaining the highest level of serviceability for the lowest cost. Specifically, it aims to ensure that operations are not disrupted due to the asset (or parts of the asset) overrunning limits of planned lifespan or below quality levels. The key usefulness of a configuration management plan is that it helps all stakeholders involved in a project to understand the project’s configurations.
Management of the SCM Process
This is especially so when a project is multi-contract, large-scale, and multi-phased. Changes can creep up in any area, including in the design standards, community and environmental requirements, delays or difficulties in project implementation, and areas status accounting related to complexities in project implementation. In order to get a better handle on navigating and dealing with these many complexities, project managers have begun to see the value of implementing the principles and practice of configuration management.
These plans are routinely used by project managers to identify and develop strategies that help to achieve the completion and end-state of a project. These plans are also useful to stakeholders of a project as it helps them to monitor the status of the project and its progress. In general, NASA adopts the CM principles as defined by SAE/EIA 649B, Configuration Management Standard, in addition to implementation as defined by NASA CM professionals and as approved by NASA management. Accounting provides a business with insights that can help it plan for the future. For example, managers can use inventory accounting methods to learn whether the cost to produce a product has increased and adjust the price or change suppliers accordingly.
The CM identification process is a mechanism for
Accounting KPIs & Metrics For Your Reports
identifying and labeling products (i.e., configuration items) produced during
the development process. This discipline focuses on providing information to outside parties interested in the business. A financial accountant typically prepares balance sheets, income statements and cash flow statements to help investors understand the company’s performance or to make a case to a bank to loan money to the business. Configuration audits facilitate project management and
technical activities to verify project products.
NASA has four baselines, each of which defines a distinct phase in the evolution of a product design. The baseline identifies an agreed-to description of attributes of a CI at a point in time and provides a known configuration to which changes are addressed. Baselines are established by agreeing to (and documenting) the stated definition of a CI’s attributes. The functional baseline is established at the SDR and will usually transfer to NASA’s control at that time for contracting efforts. For in-house efforts, the baseline is set/controlled by the NASA program/project. The one technical term that always baffled me was status accounting, which is defined as “following the evolution of a configuration item” through its lifecycle.
All changes need to be tracked and evaluated to determine their effect on the project configuration. When applied to the design, fabrication/assembly, system/subsystem testing, integration, and operational and sustaining activities of complex technology items, CM represents the “backbone” of the enterprise structure. It instills discipline and keeps the product attributes and documentation consistent. CM enables all stakeholders in the technical effort, at any given time in the life of a product, to use identical data for development activities and decision-making. CM principles are applied to keep the documentation consistent with the approved product, and to ensure that the product conforms to the functional and physical requirements of the approved design. Producing accurate financial statements is necessary to report income to the IRS for public companies, while both private and public companies are required to provide quarterly tax estimates and a yearly tax return.
The statements are open to interpretation, and as a result, investors often draw vastly different conclusions about a company’s financial performance. Instead, it contains three sections that report cash flow for the various activities for which a company uses its cash. The rules used by U.S. companies is called Generally Accepted Accounting Principles, while the rules often used by international companies is International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS). In addition, U.S. government agencies use a different set of financial reporting rules. Investors and financial analysts rely on financial data to analyze the performance of a company and make predictions about the future direction of the company’s stock price.
