Posts Tagged CM
Review: Adapting Configuration Management for Agile Teams by Mario Moreira
Posted by Mark in Book Review, Reviews on September 28, 2011
At £25.49 ($32.92) from Amazon(uk,us) (paperback edition, Kindle edition now also available) and running to a comfortable 253 pages, Mario E. Moreira’sAdapting Configuration Management for Agile Teams: Balancing Sustainability and Speed makes a good day’s reading. The book’s style is informative and not laden with jargon, making it an ideal read even for the uninitiated configuration manager. [...]
Why you’re wrong…
Posted by Mark in CMCrossroads, Configuration Management, ITSLM, Plain Old Blog, Software Configuration Management on June 28, 2011
…if you think build, change, or release management are part of configuration management. Bob Aiello lit the blue touch paper (again) on the debate about ‘what is configuration management?’ and, once again, he seems to be trying to redefine configuration management to fit the role of Configuration Manager identified (incorrectly) in many organisations. This is absolutely the [...]
When is a change a change?
Posted by Mark in Build Management, Change Management, Configuration Management, Plain Old Blog, Software Configuration Management, Version Control on June 12, 2010
A change can be viewed in two ways; conceptually or literally. What I mean by this distinction is that when I say the requested change is to “correct spelling mistakes in the poem” I am specifying conceptually what the change is to achieve (and after the fact, what the change achieved). On the other hand [...]
Toward a CM Ontology
Posted by Mark in CMCrossroads, Configuration Management, Information Management, SCM Tool, Software Configuration Management on May 22, 2010
As I suggested in a previous post, I think the future of CM (and most especially SCM) lies substantially with the semantic web. My reasoning is simple; CM is about information management and this information needs to be shared, controlled and updated across increasingly more diverse organisations and systems. To provide this facility we need [...]
Stabilizing builds
Posted by Mark in Build Management, CMCrossroads, ITSLM, Plain Old Blog on January 4, 2010
One challenge facing build managers is how to control the environment in which builds are performed. How to ensure that each repeated build uses the same sources, the same libraries, the same compilers, and so on. Only by ensuring all these elements can we truly claim to be able to reproduce a build reliably and [...]
What is configuration management?
Posted by Mark in Configuration Management, Plain Old Blog on September 16, 2009
Configuration management is four things. Identification Change control Status accounting Auditing Nothing more, nothing less. Derived disciplines such as software configuration management, product data management and so on, are always based on these four functions.
Simple, complex and difficult
As a discipline IT systems lifecycle can be characterised as simple, complex and difficult. Simple to explain. Complex to commission and maintain because the systems it monitors and controls are increasingly complex and dynamic. Difficult to do because IT system lifecycle management is much more than a set of process and tools. It involves many [...]
Making a Business Case for Configuration Management
Posted by Mark in Business Cases, Configuration Management on June 11, 2009
This is the first in a series of, fairly informal, posts about making a business case for Configuration Management. Before I get stuck in to the topic I would like to make clear that much of what I am about to discuss applies to making a business case for anything, not just Configuration Management. So, [...]
