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 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.
How formal do you need to be? Many companies use standards to fulfill contractual or compliance related requirements. This means that if you are a contractor doing business with the federal government, you may be required to demonstrate that you are using industry standards and frameworks. If you are the government agency then the GAO may require that you demonstrate that your agency is using industry standards. For CM Planning, you have a lot of support and resources available. The IEEE has an excellent standard for CM Planning known as the IEEE Std 828 - Standard for Software Configuration Management Plans. The complete text of the standard is available directly from the IEEE (http://standards.ieee.org). What's in a standard? The IEEE 828 Standard has a considerable amount of information that helps guide us on exactly what information should be included in a standard. For example, here is a list of some of the information that is expected to be included in a standard. SCM Classes of Information
Tailoring for success Tailoring is also an important aspect of making effective use of any standard. Many standards have a lot of information and frequently it is more than necessary to meet the needs of a particular group. Tailoring involves trimming the standard down to just enough information to get the job done. From the trenches I have also used CM Plans to define the "Rules of the Road" for using CM tools. In one assignment I was supporting 700+ developers using IBM Rational ClearCase, Multisite and ClearQuest. I used CM Plans to provide a common set of rules and procedures to ensure the minimal proper use of the tool. This included naming conventions for ClearCase version labels and branches. I also indicated which commands should be used and a number of commands that were not allowed to be used at all (e.g. the dreaded RMELEM command). More importantly, I included some specific requirements for the release management process including independent and repeatable builds. Your CM Plan should help with the overall development effort and serve as a proactive way to communicate critical information. Using standards such as the IEEE 828, EIA 649-A and frameworks including Cobit 4.1 and the emerging ITIL v3 is also an essential best practice. How do you use CM Plans? Please drop me a line and let me know! Bob Aiello is the Editor-in-Chief for CM Crossroads and an independent consultant specializing in Software Process Improvement including Software Configuration and Release Management. Mr. Aiello has over 25 years experience as a technical manager in several top NYC Financial Services firms where he had had company-wide responsibility for CM, often providing hands-on technical support for enterprise Source Code Management tools, SOX/Cobit compliance, build engineering, continuous integration and automated application deployment. Bob is a long standing member of the Steering Committee of the NYC Software Process Improvement Network (CitySPIN), where he serves as the chair of the CM SIG. Mr. Aiello holds a Masters in Industrial Psychology from NYU and a B.S. in Computer Science and Math from Hofstra University. You may contact Mr. Aiello at raiello@acm.org or link with him at http://www.linkedin.com/in/bobaiello .
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| Last Updated on Friday, 24 July 2009 09:47 |
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