Configuration, "to form from or after," derives from the Latin com-,
meaning "with" or "together," and figurare, "to form." It also means "a
relative arrangement of parts or elements." Configuration management therefore
refers to managing a relative arrangement of parts or elements. It's as simple
as that.
Configuration management, as we know it today, started in the late 1960s. In
the 1970s, the American government developed a number of military standards,
which included configuration management. Later, especially in the 1990s, many
other standards and publications discussing configuration management have
emerged.
In the last few years, the growing understanding of software development as a
collection of interrelated processes has influenced work on configuration
management. This means that configuration management is now also considered from
a process point of view.
