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. . Get the Feed

Web 2.0 For CM
Volume 6 - Number 10 - October 2008


Web 2.0 for CM is this month’s topic which stirred some debate, early on, from our ever opinionated CM Journal editors and writers. The first discussion revolved around how changing technologies can impact the way we practice configuration management. This is particularly important in build engineering where new frameworks and tools can significantly impact how we build, package and deploy our releases. The next discussion included those who felt that CM itself was undergoing a lot of changes and should now be called CM 2.0. Of course, Configuration Management does not exist in a vacuum and the changes in technology, economy and the tiny global world that we live in certainly impact how we practice CM and, more importantly, how we add value to the field of technology. My own vote was that the evolving standards (e.g. IEEE) and frameworks (e.g. Cobit 4.1, CMMI and especially ITIL v3) are changing the best practices that we employ on a day-to-day basis. ITIL v3 has particularly impressed me with all of its wisdom and prescriptive best practices. As I write this editor’s note, I am also getting ready for a briefing that I will give to my colleagues on the IEEE CM Planning standards working group in regard to how ITIL Service Transition complements the IEEE CM standards. It’s an exciting time to be in CM!    

The last couple of months has seen world events which have focused us once again on the importance of IT Governance and compliance, highlighting the value of Configuration Management best practices. I hope reading my Behaviorally Speaking column, discussing ITIL’s CM practices, will encourage you to want to learn more about the great work going on at the itSMF (www.itsmf.com). You can expect to read a lot more on ITIL (and also Cobit 4.1) CM best practices in the months ahead. Ben Weatherall discusses the Evolution of Life Cycles and Joe Farah discusses Web 2.0. It's always a good time to hear Brad Appleton, Robert Cowham and Steve Berczuk discuss Defining Agile SCM: Past, Present & Future and Mario Moreira presents a Framework for Evaluating and Implementing Standards. I dashed out some quick thoughts on job hunting in my HR Corner and this month we also take a deep dive on SpectrumSCM which provides an excellent   issue-based approach to Source Code Management that includes a well designed and integrated software development lifecycle. As always, please send me your own thoughts on both Web 2.0 and CM 2.0!