The adoption of model based design coupled with model compilers capable to generate production quality software code greatly improves the time-to-market and the capability to cope with the complexity of modern embedded controllers for automotive. As side-effect control and software engineers are in charge to deliver, maintain, and trace an increased amount of electronic outcomes such as executable models of controllers and systems, simulation test patterns, and acquisition data streams. Ensuring consistency of wide work-product collections, traceability towards stakeholder requirements, and compliancy with process assessment models requires the adoption of a development process in which model based development tool-chain deeply integrates with configuration and change management tools. This paper describes the approach and the actions that lead to the extension of a well established development process of hand-coded software to the new roles and skills introduced by model based design and the impact on the overall configuration and change management strategy.