Change Management
The objective of change management is to control and to document changes. But which changes are to be controlled in a software development project? Changes of your system's source code or changes of the requirements for your next software release? Also changes of your test scenario could be meant as well as changes of the development environment of your teams?
Due to the dependencies between all these areas, changes in one area most often do have some impact on others. Consistent change management connects all involved elements with each other which enables you to easily find e.g. the corresponding requirement which triggered the modifications of a specific file version of a system component, test cases, etc. Change management creates transparency and keeps you informed about why, when and by whom changes were made or planned.
This kind of traceability can only be achieved by a consistent and central administration of change requests.
So obvious that is: in real life, companies or projects often struggle to establish a change management that is expedient. Reasons for that are multiple, starting from poor awareness concerning the importance of change management, up to organizational impediments and technical problems due to insufficient tool support.
