The primary advantage to formal configuration management is a resulting project with good change management, as evidenced through changes that are properly identified, structured, linked and owned. Configuration management provides the documentation explaining why the project changes occurred, who approved the changes, and who the assigned change owner is.

The PMBOK says that the Project Manager is responsible for the following change management responsibilities:
1. Recognizing when a change has occurred.
2. Filtering out changes from inappropriate people.
3. Ensuring that change is beneficial.
4. Managing the changes as they occur.

Configuration management is the system for performing these responsibilities as well as providing product, system and software version control.

The primary disadvantage to configuration management is that it takes time, cost money, and can bring with it a level of formality that some people view as unnecessary or are uncomfortable with. If all project managers were walking computers, we wouldn