CM SP 3.2 Evidence Guidance

The release of CMMI v1.2 included a change to the examples for CM SP 3.2, Perform configuration audits to maintain integrity of the configuration baselines.
Examples of audit types include the following:

• Functional Configuration Audits (FCA) – Audits conducted to verify that the as-tested functional characteristics of a configuration item have achieved the requirements specified in its functional baseline documentation and that the operational and support documentation is complete and satisfactory.
• Physical Configuration Audit (PCA) – Audits conducted to verify that the as-built configuration item conforms to the technical documentation that defines it.
• Configuration management audits – Audits conducted to confirm that configuration management records and configuration items are complete, consistent, and accurate.

Are projects now required to provide evidence for each of these examples?

As the Configuration Management (CM) Specific Practice (SP) states, these are examples of Configuration Audits and are part of the informative material of the model. Therefore these examples are neither required nor expected. As long as the organization and projects are performing some kind of configuration audit(s) that assesses the integrity of the baseline(s), that meets the intent of the practice. For a SCAMPI Appraisal projects are not required to provide evidence for each type listed in the examples.

What is the Difference Between a Physical Configuration Audit and a Functional Configuration Audit?

A Physical Configuration Audit (PCA) is a Configuration Management (CM) audit that verifies that whatever you have built conforms to the technical documentation that defines the build. What that means is that CM must compare the configuration of the as-built product to the design documentation of the product. For example, CM looks at the list of all the configuration items (versions, etc.) in the as-built product and compares that list to the list of what is supposed to be in the product.

A Functional Configuration Audit (FCA) is a CM audit that verifies that the functions of the as-built product match the baselined functional requirements and that the operational and support documentation is complete and satisfactory.