configuration management

Articles

The Risk of Regression

“But it was just a tiny little change! How could we have known it would cause such big problems?” Regression (going backward) is a fact of life in software systems. Even though something worked before, there is no guarantee that it will work after the latest "minor" change. Yes, modular design and sound system architecture can limit the likelihood of unintended effects, but they won't eliminate them all together.

Alan S. Koch
P-P Matrix for panoramic view of Process Compliance

‘It is easy to get success but the challenge is to stay on with it,' the commonly referred quote for personal development, when seen from a business perspective it explains the need for holding on to successes in business and thereon driving growth . In other words it calls for standardization and a smooth flow of activities for running the business.

Balaji OS's picture Balaji OS
Using CM to Manage Application Deployment

Increasingly application deployment is a focus of the total CM picture. Why should it be? Isn't it something separate? Integration of application deployment with configuration management can both simplify the process and, in the optimal case, permit multiple simultaneous deployments without any additional effort. A goal here might be to allow different users to see a different versions of the application. Or it might be just to automate deployment. In this article, we'll look at the two main trends in deployment : the single point network application deployment and the more traditional deployment for either installation packaging or in-house use.

Joe Farah's picture Joe Farah
CM Roles, Responsibilities, Skills, and Job Descriptions

What title should we give a CM professional? Various ones are used, such as CM tool administrators, build engineers, release engineers, product installers, and more. It may appear that these roles are somewhat similar, but there are differences in the responsibilities and corresponding skills if you look at the context of the role.

Mario  Moreira's picture Mario Moreira
Integrating IT For Productivity

Raising the BarIT organizations are looking for new levels of productivity.  In an era of relative talent shortages, the ability to seize business opportunities depends on making dramatic increases in productivity.  At the same time, the government has raised the bar substantially with governance mandates such as Sarbanes-Oxley.  Add to this globalization, outsourcing and distributed work forces that have the effect making even smaller companies manage teams over geographic and time zones.  However, the coming whammy is the dramatic loss of talent looming up as baby-boomers retire.

Gerry Lyon's picture Gerry Lyon
Private Developer Workspaces: Where the Development Process Meets SCM Process

Software configuration management supports the delivery of application code in a reliable, repeatable manner. Having a CM process in place does nothing for the success of your organization unless you have mechanisms in place to develop application code reliably. Proper private workspace are a key element linking your SCM and your Development processes. In this article we discuss why they are important and how you can set up private code workspaces to help your team to be more effective.

High-Quality Processes

All of us can think of examples of bad processes. They seem to be indelibly burned into our memories, but it may be hard to think of what a high-quality process looks like, because it feels like we've never seen one. Of course, that's not really true. All of us have experienced good processes; they are the ones that were invisible! Processes that are helpful, efficient and effective also seem to disappear into the background. Unless something draws our attention to them, we may not notice them at all!

 

Alan S. Koch
How can I improve performance on the Application of ClearCase Labels?

I am often asked questions like:
"Why does it take so long to apply a label to 30,000 elements."

The short answer is "because you are applying a label to 30,000 elements".

Charles Clarke
What do Enterprise Architecture principles require of Configuration Management?

Although we usually think of configuration management in the context of a software development project, CM also exists in the context of an enterprise. I wondered if taking the twenty principles used for an enterprise architecture framework, we could see just how well configuration management stands up to supporting these general architectural principles in an enterprise context.

Charles Edwards
How We Got from Version Control to Product Management

Version control (VC) has been around long before software. But it wasn't until the late 1960s and early 1970s that it emerged as a common software function. Today, version control is still necessary, but is a much smaller piece of the configuration management (CM) and product management (PM) pictures. While version control is a relatively simple application, configuration management is anything but. No wonder it is embraced with such reluctance. This doesn't have to be the case. The key to adopting a successful CM program is to select tools which help you to automate the complexity without taking short cuts that will lead to problems down the road.

Joe Farah's picture Joe Farah

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