I've seen countless sets of requirements and RFIs come my way for acquiring new CM/ALM tools. However, it is a very rare occasion when I see a company actually publish (and send out) the project CM Plan to potential tool vendors. In my most recent encounter of this approach, the pitch was: How would you change this plan based on your CM/ALM solution for us? This project has it right—not just a set of requirements, but an actual CM Plan, and not so much, "What does your tool do?" as, "What will our CM Plan look like with your solution?"

As a piece of Christmas cheer we bring you a traditional olde English carol. It is believed that this particular carol was sung to programmers by configuration managers to earn additional money during the Christmas season. The lyrics (including mention of Mil-STD-973 and CMM among other themes) are reputed to date back to the 15th century although the author is unknown. We have been lucky enough to track down a recording of this traditional carol—click the start button.

The step between specifying requirements to working on a system design can be tricky. Fortunately, the basis on which the step is made can be calculated. Paul Reed thoroughly explains how the transition should progress and offers some instructions on how to move properly through this phase.

The repository is the official archive of a project's work products. We treat our repository with great respect. In contrast, developer often treat their working folder with very little regard. It exists for the purpose of being abused. The working folder starts out worthless, nothing more than a copy of the repository. If it is destroyed, we have lost nothing, so we run risky experiments which endanger its life. In this excerpt from his online book, "Source Control HOWTO," Eric Sink describes explores common "best practices" for using working folders.