Version Control

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SCM Essentials for Small Teams: Less Can Be More

There are several questions you have to ask and answer when implementing software configuration management (SCM) for small teams: Is the minimalist approach of SCM congruent with my duties to implement sound SCM? Is there a difference between implementing SCM on small versus large teams? Can I pick and choose the concepts of SCM to implement?

Joe Townsend's picture Joe Townsend
When Large Teams Shrink

Ben Weatherall addresses what happens when large teams shrink to the extent that they are considered small. There are several situations where this commonly happens—for example, when a team has been raided by other teams, when the majority of the work has been accomplished and a large team is no longer needed, or when the corporate situation is such that downsizing occurs.

Ben Weatherall's picture Ben Weatherall
Beyond Configuration Management into Application Lifecycle Management—Just a Change of Focus?

CM is an important driver for development productivity, yet remains often overlooked when discussing how the development lifecycle could be optimized. Often, this happens because of the perceived complexity of parallel strategies and additional overhead. However, today’s CM tools offer powerful capabilities that allow users to tap into that potential.

Mike Shepard
Personality Challenges Inherent in Shifting from CM into ALM

This month’s topic is a paradigm shift that requires that we move from focusing narrowly on the CM function to the much broader Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) view. I know people who cannot make this shift. From a personality perspective, these folks have great difficulty seeing the big picture and the more comprehensive lifecycle view required by ALM. There are good reasons for these problems, and in this article we’ll examine the personality challenges inherent in shifting from CM into ALM.

Leslie  Sachs's picture Leslie Sachs
Moving Beyond Configuration Management to Application Lifecycle Management

Perhaps when there was less market pressure, or fewer applications and products with far fewer computers, it was fine to focus on software design and implementation. Joe Farah writes that in those days of old, managing the new flexibility and capabilities afforded by software was the big challenge, but we've come a long way since then.

Joe Farah's picture Joe Farah
How Workers' Personalities Can Affect How They Approach Projects and Products

Personality accounts for a lot. You can tell a great deal about how someone is going to handle a situation by understanding their personality. In fact, if you get really good at this game you can sometimes predict what they are going to do. Some people just can’t manage to the see the big picture, and that is often evident in how they approach their work, whether tactical project or a strategic product. If you want to be able to work with different personalities then you need to understand what motivates them to act, or in some cases, fail to act.

Leslie  Sachs's picture Leslie Sachs
Configuration Management is Lika a Race Track—Really!

A race track is built as a permanent facility designed with materials and formation to ensure the track is easily maintainable, and to enable that class of race car to travel in a reliable manner. So what does this have to do with configuration management (CM)? The race track is a lot like a CM infrastructure needed by product team to support the building of product. The race car is a lot like the CM tasks that are executed to help the project race to the release finish line.

Mario  Moreira's picture Mario Moreira
Wrangling a Release: The Role of Release Manager

Companies that develop multiple products often struggle with how to ensure they all work together as a solution and struggle with how to get the deliverables from various products together into a working release. Project managers and product managers have other priorities to handle. So who handles a release that wrangles together multiple project deliverables from multiple products that define a solution or complex release? The answer is the Release Manager.

Mario  Moreira's picture Mario Moreira
Don't Relegate Release Management to a Product's Release

Joe Farah writes that there are two key requirements: release management has to start prior to development and the tools and processes available for release management are equally applicable and important for everyone on the product team, not just for the release team.

Joe Farah's picture Joe Farah
People Skills Play an Essential Role in Release Management

Release management is a complex function that involves many essential technical tasks that must be completed in a very specific way. At first glance, one might think that Release Management has little or nothing to do with personality and psychology. In the book Configuration Management Best Practices: Practical Methods that Work in the Real World, Bob Aiello and I focused three of our fourteen chapters on the people side of CM. The fact is that people skills play an essential role in release management. Read on if you want to improve your ability to get the job done and achieve success in release management!

Leslie  Sachs's picture Leslie Sachs

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