The Bill of Materials uniquely identifies all constituent parts of a product or deployment unit. The Deployment Manager needs to make sure that the tested and approved version of the software and all product enclosures are ready for delivery and mass-production.

The shrink-wrapped product will consist of the software on some form of storage media, user documents or manuals, licensing agreement forms, and the packaging itself.

The Deployment Manager needs to ensure that all of the items for manufacture are in their final, approved state at the time of delivery to the manufacturer. The approved application and installation software needs to be checked for any viruses and saved on a storage medium that can be mass-produced; for example, CDs. The user documents or manuals need to be in their print-ready format. All details relating to the time it takes to prepare all of the items for delivery are captured in the Deployment Plan.

After all component parts are in place and you have verified they are complete, they can be handed over to the manufacturing organization for mass-production.

Interestingly, the manufacturing process influences what will be included on the Bill of Materials. For example, if your product will be shipped in boxes, then a distinguishing feature for a particular product could be the labels that are attached to the boxes. In such a case, the item that appears on the Bill of Materials is labels, rather than boxes.