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There was a time when mainframe development was the norm and teams were in close physical contact only having to walk down a few feet to interact with their colleagues. However, times have changed and access to code has to be considered in a much more serious manner. Some companies have had multiple sites participate in their development efforts for upwards of two decades, but a majority of them have only been at this for the last 5 years or just undertaking this venture. The crux of distributed development is the ability to share code for development across sites via the network or via tape or disk.

In the past, I had a window view of the Boston Harbor from my office. I could see boats coming in an out, including numerous tour boats, whale watch boats, and sail boats. Occasionally, I got the chance to see the large ships including the tankers, battleships, tall ships (e.g., elegant large sailing ships), and the rare site of an aircraft carrier. The aircraft carrier is a floating runway for jets. Imagine the infrastructure needed to get those incredibly fast jets ready and flying.

For any good developer, applications are like children. You spend countless hours nurturing them and preparing them for the real world. Sometimes they frustrate you, other times they give you tremendous pleasure. And in the end, you’re just downright proud.

What is a Branch in software development? A branch is what happens when your development team needs to work on two distinct copies of a project at the same time. This is best explained by citing a common example.

Discussion has gone around a number of times on the issue. There's even been a poll on the issue. Is configuration management part of change management or vice versa? Everyone has an opinion and there does not seem to be a consensus. What's the problem? Well, here's how I see it.

“Dad,” asked a young man, “my lady friends keep talking to me about being ‘involved with’ them versus being ‘committed to’ them. What exactly is the difference between involvement and commitment?”

“What did you have for breakfast, son?” his father replied.

“Bacon and eggs like always. Why do you ask?” said the son.

“Bacon and eggs, my boy, is a perfect illustration of the difference between involvement and commitment: the chicken was involved, but the pig was committed!”

Project perspective or product perspective - what's the best way to look at configuration management. Well... both. We'll journey through both sides, giving this author's perspective of each, and showing how changes form the crossroads between project CM and product CM. Right off the bat, we'll need to agree on some definitions.