Lean Configuration Management

Configuration management is way of for supporting software development with standard practice within traditional software development processes product. One of the important reasons of software development configurations management is to control modifications made to the software product.

Lean Software Development philosophy mainly focuses on delivering clients value in a stable flow and eliminating needless process waste. One method to implement lean is to initiate agile software development ways, like XP or Scrum. Agile values also have numerous focuses on how to manage modifications, but different traditional Configuration management agile ways are being more feasible to changes.

Configuration Management

The rising fame of agile development techniques is putting new demands on the traditional Configuration management obedience. A working Configuration management environment is necessary for the fast environment of agile development ways, but the Configuration management process and the Configuration management role has to be adapted to the present evolution of software development ways as well as automated tools.

This article converse lean principles and agile values within a CM scope and also introduce a technique to classify the CM discipline in relation to development method and level of tool automation, and finally share a number of the experiences of the creator.

Traditional Configuration Management Definition

Almost every pamphlet on Configuration Management has its own explanation of the subject. Here you find some common properties and to be able to contrast those further on with lean and agile thoughts.

Particularly message how they every one talk about how to contract with changes, where traditional Configuration management manages changes through controlling them. Agile thoughts also focus lots around how to manage changes, but utter more on how to be adaptive to changes. All are targeting the identical essential problem in software development , but with slightly unusual approaches.

Offshore Software Development

IEEE – “Configuration Management is the method of recognizing and describing the items in the system, controlling the modifications of these items during the lifecycle, recording and reporting the type of items and modifications requests, and verifying the wholeness and correctness of items.”

CMM – “…Software Development Configuration Management engage identifying the configuration of the software development at given points in time, methodically controlling changes to the configuration, and maintaining the integrity and traceability of the configuration all through the Software Development lifecycle.

Here is some list of practices which generally are comprised in the definition of CM:

  • Identify configuration items
  • Version control of configuration items
  • Build management
  • Release management
  • Tracking status
  • Controlling changes
  • Auditing