configuration management

A variety of agile software development methods and practices have now been around for a solid ten years and existed for at least another ten years prior. Configuration management (CM) for agile development has now been discussed since the turn of the century. So what are the core principles of CM and how can CM help agile teams?

For many people, Agile software development congers up the thought of "undisciplined" software development. The reality is that using an Agile approach to its greatest benefit requires discipline in a variety of ways.  None is more critical than the discipline of software configuration management. Agile teams are generally small, but their SCM needs are big. 

It used to be that SCM was a complex and effort-intensive process that small projects and businesses could not affort to invest in. Tools were expensive, automation was a daunting task, and the imposition of process on the small development team would take away the small business advantage of moving quickly. Today, and certainly in the next generation of CM, quite the opposite is true. How can that be?

A project baseline is the fundamental CM technique for release management. Configuration management has historically been about managing the acquisition of new products. To that end, a set of baselines is defined corresponding to various milestones in the product development cycle. These baselines reflect different expressions of the final product and include the functional, allocated, and released baselines.