What is a significant outcome of proper configuration management?

Proper configuration management is vital in maintaining the consistency and integrity of a system throughout its lifecycle. By managing configuration items and changes systematically, an organization can clearly track and control its systems, which directly reduces the likelihood of errors and system failures. This meticulous oversight means that potential issues can be identified and addressed before they lead to outages or disruptions, thus ensuring a more reliable performance of the system.

While decreased project completion time, increased team collaboration, and enhanced product marketing can all be influenced by effective project management and team dynamics, they are not direct outcomes of configuration management practices. Instead, the primary benefit lies in the mitigation of risks associated with system reliability, making the choice of reduced risk of system failures the most relevant outcome of proper configuration management.