There are many definitions of configuration management, most of them containing four basic elements: identification, control, status accounting and auditing. Although formally correct, the translation into practice is far from easy for many organizations. I wonder why this is...

Let's have a look at a car for a minute. From a user perspective, a car is a way of transportation from point A to point B. From a technical perspective, a car is an system where you can put people and luggage in and that allows a controlled way of acceleration, deceleration and steering. Given the technical view, there is no way to define that a car brings you from any particular point to another point.
Now let's go back to configuration management. In fact, identification, control, status accounting and auditing are the technical view on CM. But what is the user view on CM? Why do we need CM?

I think that the main and possibly only reason why we need CM is that we need to communicate and share. The effectiveness of communication depends on the integrity of the information we communicate and the effectiveness of sharing depends on the integrity of the objects we share (work products). If the information and work products would be static, a (simple) library or stocking system would be enough. But in practice the information and work products are not static; they are evolving in a planned way (if the planning is followed). The integrity (or validity) of the information and work products also constantly changes.

Now because the information and work products are constantly changing, we need some guidance in determining what is correct and what is not. That's why we need concepts like streaming or branching to facilitate parallel development, we need the concept of tagging, labeling or baselining to determine the status of a particular configuration, we need the concept of promotion to visualize the state of evolution.

Communication of information, sharing of work products, and assuring the integrity of the whole while it is constantly changing, is the main challenge of configuration management. Hopefully, it is easier to understand configuration management from this angle than from its formal definition.