Each month the CM Journal provides original content articles and regular columns from industry thought leaders and software providers on a wide variety of configuration management and application lifecycle management topics.
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CM Plan or Planning for CM
Volume 7 - Number 8 - August 2009
 CM Planning and Planning for CM is an important area of focus in Configuration Management. There are widely accepted standards and frameworks which share best practices for CM planning. You should certainly learn and benefit from the experience of others as well as share your own ideas and knowledge. At CM Crossroads, we are glad to have our experts give you a strong start to writing effective CM plans.
Joe Farah leads the way with a product road map in his description of a good CM Plan, while Alan Koch tells us how to manage change. Leslie Sachs gives us some advice on picking the right personalities to do effective CM Planning and I review some of my trench level tactics for practical CM Planning. Dennis Nickle gives us his perspective on CM Planning and Ben Weatherall puts a little more real life perspective into his article as he describes what really matters. Chayim Kirschen describes environmentally friendly CM while Sean Blanton discusses Planning Projects for Enterprise CM. If you want to see an outline of the IEEE 828 Standard for CM Planning then take a look at my article entitled, “Got CM Plan” (originally published in CM Basics). You also want to take a look at Slava Imeshev CM Capacity Planning. Mario Moreira’s article on CM Planning for a Downturn in the Economy was originally published in 2008 and is just as relevant today along with Tamir Gefen’s CM Planning for Turbulent Times.
The latest version of CM Crossroads is ready to go online next week. With a focus on Social Networking and community cmCrossroads.com version 6 is designed to be the Facebook for Configuration Management. CM Wiki is back and better than ever. CM Yellow Pages is now more robust and allows you to easily add your own resources. All community members have the ability to add their own Blog using the My Blog feature in the community section. Check it out and let us know what you think. A sneak peak is available at easygreenies.com .
Whatever your CM planning needs, CM Crossroads is a great place to learn and share CM best practices!
Bob Aiello
Editor in Chief
CM Crossroads
raiello@acm.org
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CM: THE NEXT GENERATION: CM Planning
by Joe Farah
If you're planning a CM project, it's time to put together a CM Plan. A CM Plan can take on many forms and the CM Crossroads site is a great place to investigate what goes into a plan. In this article I'm going to concentrate on a number of areas that need to be addressed in your plan in order to follow some SCM Best Practices.
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Personality Matters – CM Planning or Planning for CM
by Leslie Sachs
Poor planning is the root cause of many problems. Planning for Configuration Management can significantly impact your organization's productivity and effectiveness. Many teams live in a constant treadmill of responding to emergencies that could have easily been avoided with a little bit of planning. Some people just don't have the ability or demeanor to create an adequate plan, others don't even want to. In technology, many professionals excel at responding to crisis after crisis and become known for their skills at "saving the day".
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Behaviorally Speaking - CM Planning or Planning for CM
by Bob Aiello
Once, a really long time ago - at least according to the Judaeo-Christian tradition - Adam was charged with naming things. Let's pretend he didn't and the family is talking around the campfire...The father, talking to his son, says, "I am going to snarf an elephant for blurb. Do you want to greep a mouse for me?" "What is a greep?"
"Greep? I said get me a prud. How else can I capture a cat?"
"Is this a prud?" the son asked, holding up a club.
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Change Management is not Change Control
by Bob Aiello
A key part of planning configuration management for our projects is determining how we will manage change. After all, "change happens", and any good configuration manager is concerned with how it is managed. Unfortunately, more often than not, our processes focus more on controlling change than on managing it! That is, we put a lot of effort into trying to keep change from happening, and relatively less effort into ensuring that when (not if, but when) change happens, we manage it effectively.
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Software Configuration Management Planning
by Dennis E. Nickle
So, now you have been notified that you have won the bid for a contract in a fiercely competitive bidding effort. Is it too early to start your Software Configuration Management (SCM) Planning? Perhaps around PDR, you say? Actually, you are already much too late! Yes, late. Some people are so picky that they recommend you start the SCM planning about the time that the proposal is being written.
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The Downward Spiral, or a Definition of a Mess
by Ben Weatherall
n this month's article I will be drawing on a recent personal experience. You have been warned. A while ago I was having an increasingly difficult time breathing and I was able to do less and less. I went to the doctor several times and followed up with phone calls as, while some symptoms got better, overall I was doing worse. It got to the point where I was unable to drive to work without pulling off once or twice to take "power naps" of around 10 minutes each.
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Lessons for Environmentally Friendly Configuration Management
by Chayim Kirshen
Green, the planet, ecology; whatever the phrase, the environment is on people's minds. The environment and Configuration Management share a lot of the same ideals, concepts, and rules. Thinking about Configuration Management planning from the perspective of an environmentalist helps a CM team plan for for future events in a fairly low future-cost way.
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Capacity Planning For Software Build Management Servers
by Slava Imeshev
A software build management server is an integral part of the Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) infrastructure. A typical ALM infrastructure consists of a version control system, a bug or an issue tracking system, and a build server. Software build processes such as Continuous Integration and daily builds are highly IO, memory and computationally intensive. Dedicating adequate resources to the build management server ensures efficient software development.
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CM Planning for a Downturn in the Economy
by Mario Moreira
The end of 2008 presents us with a very weak economy. We hear the words "economic crisis", "gloomy outlook", "recession", and "economic decline" in the news again and again. We are also seeing small to massive layoffs in a number of sectors and IT is certainly not immune. The question for those CM'ers in light of this economic downturn is how do I adjust my Configuration Management (CM) planning for the coming year when budgets are being slashed and projects are being cancelled?
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CM Planning in Turbulent Times
by Tamir Gefen
In Turbulent economic times such as the recent days, it is reasonable to assume that while some things will be reduced or cut, (e.g. human resources and budgets), others (e.g. documentation) will be maintained or even increased. So, what can we do to create effective and accurate CM Plans?
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Planning Projects for Enterprise CM
by Sean Blanton
Effectively planning and setting realistic expectations before you start your CM project can mean the difference between actual and perceived success and failure. Here are some great tips to help you sell the success of your project and avoid costly pitfalls.
“CM,” as I use it in this article, may involve security, hardware and operating systems management, production control and deployment, version management, change management and build management. My experience lies primarily with the distributed platforms that have exploded in the last decade in terms of growth and delivery for companies.
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Got CM Plan?
by Bob Aiello
Imagine trying to build a house without a set of plans. Anyone who has ever added so much as a single room to their home will tell you that the plans must be detailed and reviewed or else the project will likely fail. Build engineering a major Java SOA system can be just as complex and creating a CM Plan is an essential requirement for your success. Read on to see what you should include in your CM Plan.
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