FAQ: SCM, why?

The actual question was: help me to convince them! This page aims at answering only one part of the question: convince of the interest, for them, of something we'd call SCM. The thread mostly developed the other aspect of the question: convince them, how? (of whatever). We can also discuss this distinction.

It is fairly easy to come with a few horror stories, showing in hindsight what mess the absence of management of information led into. But this doesn't make a real case for CM, because, CM may mean extremely different things:

• identifying the plague doesn't mean the cholera would be better;
• nothing comes for free, so you'd have to make something like a ROI analysis, but this would involve estimating the investment, the return, and the relationship between them on a fine grain, and it doesn't seem pacticable.

That's why CM often presents itself as a religious business with people telling you that you have to knee down and pray, and it'll pay back in the long range. And that the more it hurts, the better.

Well, there must be better than that. Let's call that SCM, and make sure that people know why they use it, and feel the benefits. That SCM brings them solutions to what really bogs them:

1. fear
   • of breaking things
   • of wasting their time because somebody else works in their back
2. frustration
   • of not being allowed to fix their problems
   • of having to wait for approvals or answers from people who do not really care or understand
3. isolation
   • having to find alone solutions for their problems
   • having to find signal out of the noise of crap documentation and inconsistent data.

-- MarcGirod - 11 Jun 2009