Configuration management and its implementation barriers in public sector engineering organizations of Pakistan: An empirical study

In engineering organizations, Configuration Management (CM) is employed over the lifecycle of a product in order to ensure traceability of changes and control of its performance and its functional and physical parameters. It makes certain that a system performs as identified in the design documents. In public sector engineering organizations of Pakistan CM practices never get implemented in their entirety and therefore is relatively less fruitful. This limited use of CM practices is due to certain technical and cultural barriers that exist in these organizations. The overall objective of this researcher is to identify and prioritize these barriers public sector engineering organizations and categorize them into adaptable groups of factors. This research objective was accomplished by dividing data collection process into two different phases. In the first phase, some CM experts were asked through an open-ended question to identify these barriers. Afterwards in the second phase, these experts were provided with a questionnaire to answer a series of questions regarding CM implementation barriers. Fifteen barriers were identified through this process. These barriers were then ranked and finally categorized with the help of Factor Analysis. In this way this research develops a scale for measuring the criticality or severity of CM implementation barriers in the public sector engineering organizations of Pakistan and thus helps CM practitioners in these organizations in achieving excellence in the implementation and continuous development of CM processes.