OASIS OSLC Lifecycle Integration for Change and Configuration Management (OSLC CCM) Technical Committee

The official charter for this Technical Committee is provided below. (For additional information, see the Call for Participation that was issued when this TC was formed.)

  1. Name of the TC

    OASIS OSLC Lifecycle Integration for Change and Configuration Management (OSLC CCM) Technical Committee

  2. Statement of Purpose

    Managing change and configurations within a complex systems and software development lifecycle can become very difficult, especially in heterogeneous environments including homegrown tools, open source projects, and commercial tools from different vendors. Organizations need to design, develop, deliver, and evolve a portfolio of products with variations in features, configurations, and functions to manage change requests from customers more effectively and efficiently and to align development with business objectives.

    In order to support these activities, there is a need for an open technical architecture that is minimalist, loosely coupled, and standardized. This provides common standardized data formats and operations. The OSLC (Open Services for Lifecycle Collaboration) initiative applies World Wide Web and Linked Data principles, such as those defined in the W3C Linked Data Platform (LDP), to create a cohesive set of specifications that can enable products, services, and other distributed network resources to interoperate successfully. Therefore, the goal of the OSLC Lifecycle Integration for Change and Configuration Management TC (referred to subsequently as the OASIS OSLC CCM TC) is to produce specifications that leverage the OASIS OSLC lifecycle integration Core Specification and enable interoperation of essential change, configuration, and asset management processes across the entire application and product lifecycle to improve transparency, traceability, and agility. The purpose of the OASIS OSLC CCM TC is to define a common set of resources, formats, and RESTful services for use in tools supporting change, configuration, and asset management domains supporting scenarios motived from Application Lifecycle Management (ALM), Product Lifecycle Management (PLM), Integrated Service Management (ISM), Cloud Computing, and DevOps.

  3. Scope

    The OASIS OSLC CCM TC defines a set of resources, formats, and a RESTful web services interface for:

    Change Management — that is, the management of product change requests, activities, tasks and relationships between those and related resources during the application and product lifecycle. The OASIS OSLC CCM TC will accept as one input the OSLC MS Steering Committee approved versions of the OSLC Change Management 3.0 specifications from open-services.net and targeted for development at OASIS as indicated here.

    Configuration Management — that is, the management of configurations, configuration items, baselines, and change sets for information resources from any domain. The OASIS OSLC CCM TC will accept as one input the OSLC MS Steering Committee approved versions of the OSLC Configuration Management 1.0 specifications from open-services.net and targeted for development at OASIS as indicated here.

    Asset Management — which allows enterprises to catalog, govern, manage, search for, and maintain assets. An asset is anything tangible or intangible that provides value through reference or reuse across a wide audience over an extended period of time such as software, documentation, or representations of equipment. The OASIS OSLC CCM TC will accept as one input the OSLC MS Steering Committee approved versions of the OSLC Asset Management 2.0 specifications from open-services.net, targeted for development at OASIS as indicated here.

    Here are the key responsibilities of the OASIS OSLC CCM TC:

    1. Expand on LDP and OSLC Core concepts, as needed, to support integrations with Change and Configuration Management tools, including
      1. Common vocabulary describing change configuration and asset management resources
      2. Standard links between change, configuration and asset management resources and other resources in the software and hardware development lifecycle
      3. State transitions of resources
      4. Binary attachments on resources
      5. Aggregation of configurations of resources across multiple providers
      6. Integrating tools that already have an existing versioning system, possibly including configurations and baselines, without requiring such tools to re-implement those capabilities. In these cases, the resources to be managed by this cross-tool, cross-domain service may include configurations or baselines defined by existing tools; as such, the service provides composite or aggregate configurations and baselines.
    2. Add additional technical elements as required to support current and future scenarios from OSLC User Groups, OSLC MS-affiliated TCs, Subcommittees, and the OSLC Member Section Steering Committee
    3. Drive common change, configuration, and asset management and other domain needs with the OSLC Core TC
  4. Deliverables

    The OASIS OSLC CCM TC is expected to produce within 24 months of the first meeting:

    1. Scenarios: these will guide the priorities and specification contents within the TC
      1. Also a prioritized list of scenarios both developed by the OASIS OSLC CCM TC and contributed from OSLC User Groups, OSLC MS-affiliated TCs, Subcommittees, and the OSLC MS Steering Committee.
    2. Specifications: develop specifications to support the identified integration scenarios. The specifications will provide terminology and rules for defining resource vocabularies in terms of the property names and value-types and will recommend various resource representations.
      1. These deliverables may constitute a collection of specifications, one per capability or a single specification covering a collection of capabilities
      2. Additional specifications may be introduced over time to satisfy capabilities needed by supported scenarios
    3. Supporting and enabling material, produced in collaboration with other OSLC MS-affiliated TCs as appropriate or on an as-needed basis to support broad adoption including:
      1. Guidance — informative, non-normative material covering topics such as implementation, resource design, and specification development
      2. Best Practices — publication of various best (and worst) practices to aid in the implementation of specifications and interoperable solutions.
    4. Terminology: a common set of terms intended to be used across OSLC MS-affiliated TCs
    5. Vocabulary: in support of specifications, a set of machine and human processable vocabularies, including tools and best practices
    6. Test suites: provide description test suites (perhaps manual) to illustrate how implementations of specifications should comply with the specification. OASIS OSLC CCM TC may also identify suitable third party automated test suites, such as an open source suite from Eclipse Lyo, that can be used to execute such tests.

    The OASIS OSLC CCM TC plans to revise and expand its specifications over time, to enable functionality called for by revisions in, and expansions of, the motivational scenarios. This means that new specifications that cover new capabilities may be introduced as scenarios are refined to support new capabilities. The TC may produce separate specifications for various CCM focused areas such as for: Change, Configuration, or Asset Management.

    Maintenance

    Once the TC has completed work on a specific deliverable (whether “complete” means it has become an OASIS Standard, or simply a Committee Specification is left to the TC’s discretion), the TC will provide maintenance for that deliverable. The purpose of maintenance is to provide minor revisions to previously adopted deliverables to clarify ambiguities, inconsistencies, and obvious errors. Maintenance is not intended to enhance a deliverable or to extend its functionality. In addition to maintenance, the TC may choose to create new versions of specifications that support additional capabilities as needed by scenarios.

  5. IPR Mode

    This TC will operate under the "RF (Royalty Free) on Limited Terms" IPR mode as defined in the OASIS Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) Policy.

  6. Anticipated audience of the work

    The OASIS OSLC CCM TC will produce specifications that are applicable to two types of interest groups:

    1. Developers of OSLC specifications, including those produced by OSLC MS-affiliated TCs and other standards groups
    2. End users of Specifications, including implementers (software vendors, open source projects, and developers of custom business software)

    The work should be of interest to anyone involved with integration of tools.

  7. Language

    The OASIS OSLC CCM TC will conduct its business in English. The TC may elect to form subcommittees that produce localized documentation of the TC's work in additional languages.