As the use of software and electronics in modern products is omnipresent and continuously increasing, companies in the embedded systems industry face increasing complexity in controlling and enabling the evolution of their IT-intensive products. Traditionally, product configurations and their updates were managed separately for the hardware and software discipline. At specified release moments during the development of their products, the hardware and software were released together. But, as the usage, flexibility and complexity of software and electronics increases, and fierce competition requires shorter time-to-market and customizable products, more frequent releases of integrated hardware and software configurations becomes necessary. This evolution requires adequate configuration management both within the hard-and software disciplines and across them. In many organizations, software configuration management is more visibly established than hardware configuration management due to the inherent flexibility and complexity of software. But as the flexibility of hardware has increased through the use of configurable hardware, the need for more intense We propose a generic development cycle with real-life examples to illustrate the configuration management concepts. Then, from the sociotechnical design point of view, we raise awareness and argue that configuration management tools, processes, and its organization must be further aligned to support the complexity and interdisciplinary nature of the hardware/software boundary of evolving embedded systems.

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