configuration management

Articles

Coach Release Management like a Winning Sports Team

Release management is very similar to a team sport that involves many essential interactions. Very often teams find it particularly challenging to work together effectively, and the end result is that they cannot manage to complete any complex tasks without making many mistakes. Sports teams are also affected by interpersonal dynamics that can either help build the team or render it completely dysfunctional. Release management involves the packaging of every component in order to successfully deliver a complete product to a customer. Your release management function needs to efficiently coordinate the work of each player on your team.

Leslie  Sachs's picture Leslie Sachs
When is Open Source not Enough?

Open source CI tools have been immensely popular, but are they the perfect fit for your operation? Answer these seven questions to quickly assess if you should upgrade to an enterprise-class CI environment.

Anders  Wallgren's picture Anders Wallgren
Essentials of the Build Process

Build is central to CM and iit's critical to do it right. A basic build capability is founded on two key fundamentals: the ability to reproduce the build and the ability to automate the build process. Without these fundamentals, you're fighting an uphill battle. Reproduction of the build implies that you have a CM system able to capture the build definition. Automation helps to ensure that no manual errors can play into the production, but this is just a basic build capability.

Joe Farah's picture Joe Farah
Welcoming Change

"If they would just stop changing their minds!" Untold numbers of programmer’s rants have begun with that lament (including a few of my own). Of course, we know that will never happen. Change is a fact that we must live with and to avoid change is to avoid reality. The Agile method goes beyond merely acknowledging this reality. It teaches us how to capitalize on the changes that will inevitably come along to produce a better result than the one we planned for in the first place. We don't just accept change and we don't control it. Instead, we learn how to welcome change!

Alan S. Koch
Sometimes, You Just Need to Slow Down

While it may seem that slowing things down is undesirable, such approaches often work very well and produce a higher throughput than the original (seemingly more active and energetic, if perhaps rather more frenetic) process. The downside of these experiences is that they make it easy to confuse manage with control, and even easier to interpret control as inhibit.

Selecting the Best Tools for Your IT Team

Tools selection should really be the most objective and straightforward task that any technology professional could be asked to work on. After all, selecting a hammer is a basic task that depends on objective criteria such as the size of the nail that you are pounding into a wall. In technology, tools selection involves a lot more group dynamics than you might expect, and it is very possible that personality issues within the team evaluating the tools could cause you to make some costly mistakes. This article discusses what you need to know to make sure that you can successfully “tame your wild tools selection process” and yield the best results for your organization.

Leslie  Sachs's picture Leslie Sachs
How to Evaluate CM and ALM Tools

Joe Farah writes that evaluating and selecting configuration managment (CM) and application lifecycle management (ALM) tools is an opportunity both to ensure that you have a good process in place and to learn the present state and the state-of-the art in CM and ALM technology.

Joe Farah's picture Joe Farah
People, Processes and Tools: The Three Pillars of Software Development

Every project is dependent upon people, processes, and tools:  they are how the work gets done. These three essential elements are not equal, though, as each has its own strengths and weaknesses.   Each one provides a different value to our projects.

 

Alan S. Koch
Options for Promoting and Controlling Changes in Risk Adverse Environments

Change occurs everywhere, and every day - especially in the software world. Knowing how to navigate that change, and maximizing it's acceptance across the board is crucial for development teams to reach their goals. Learn how this can be accomplished in processes that are easy to adopt.

Anonymous
Consider Team Members' Personalities When Creating a Change Control Group

Creating a change control group (or any other process improvement effort) can be incredibly successful—or it can get bogged down with impossible "people" issues, often due to conflicting communication styles and personalities. If you want your team to be a success, you may need to consider some of these people issues, or else risk failure due to personality issues that really matter. It's not hard to address these challenges and build a change control function that will succeed despite some of the inherent challenges in getting people who may have very different styles and approaches to work together.

Leslie  Sachs's picture Leslie Sachs

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