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There are five basic activities of Configuration Management:

• Planning - The Configuration Management plan should cover the next three to six months in detail, and the following twelve months in outline. It should be reviewed at least twice a year and will include a strategy, policy, scope, objectives, roles and responsibilities, the Configuration Management processes, activities and procedures, the CMDB , relationships with other processes and third parties, as well as tools and other resource requirements.
• Identification - The selection, identification and labelling of all CIs. This covers the recording of information about CI's, including ownership, relationships, versions and unique identifiers. CIs should be recorded at a level of detail justified by the business need - typically to the level of "independent change".
• Control - This gives the assurance that only authorised and identifiable CIs are accepted and recorded from receipt to disposal. It ensures that no CI is added, modified, replaced or removed without the appropriate controlling documentation e.g. approved RFC, updated specification. All CIs will be under Change Management Control.
• Status Accounting - The reporting of all current and historical data concerned with each CI throughout its life-cycle. It enables changes to CIs and tracking of their records through various statuses, e.g. ordered, received, under test, live, under repair, withdrawn or for disposal.
• Verification and Audit - This is a series of reviews and audits that verifies the physical existence of CIs, and checks that they are correctly recorded in the CMDB . It includes the process of verifying Release and Configuration documentation before changes are made to the live environment.