 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 - December 2008
CM Planning or planning for CM has long been a critical part of any
disciplined and effective configuration management function. I personally
have the pleasure of serving with some of the most knowledgable CM
experts on the IEEE 828 Standards working group which is devoted to CM
Planning. The IEEE has a lot of valuable tools, but 828 is certainly one of
the most popular industry standards. In future columns I expect to be able to
share with you some of the most interesting (and exciting) changes that
we are making to the 828 CM Planning Standard (hint - expect a lot more
guidance on process).
Our writers at CM Crossroads also provide a great deal of guidance and
expertise on CM Planning, starting off with Mario Moreira who discusses CM
Planning for a downturn in the Economy, while Ben Weatherall discusses the
CMP - an alternative approach. Tamir Gefen presents CM Planning
in Turbulent Times and Joe Farah gives us the Next Generation of the CM
Plan. Naturally, I discuss CM Planning in
Behaviorally Speaking and we step
over to testing as Derk-Jan de Grood treats us to a discussion on
Result-drivenTesting and David Nessl takes over the HR Corner with his CM
Primer for Hiring Managers. Now get ready to hold your sides as you delight
in our creative Agile Team's version of God Bless Ye Merry Gentlemen for CM!
Take my advise and just listen to this delightful tune that will no doubt
be your personal cup of cheer (not to mention laughter). Hint - do not look
at the words until you listen to the clever lyrics!!!
At CM Crossroads we wish everyone a joyous holiday season and a New Year
filled with peace, health and prosperity!
Bob Aiello
Editor in Chief
CM Crossroads
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Behaviorally Speaking - CM Planning
CM Planning is all about communicating the rules of the road for how your team should successfully complete their Configuration Management related tasks. This includes build engineering, release (packaging) management, change control, and, of course, deployment. Sadly, many people don't bother to spend the time to do effective CM Plans and they usually suffer from miscommunication and bad releases as a direct result. It is also true that writing volumes of documentation is a total waste of time ...
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CM Planning in Turbulent Times
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?
In this article I'd like to show some essential points for effective CM planning, which can offer a solution of reducing costs, based on the IEEE 828 standards. Basically, the goal is to reduce quantity bu...
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CM: THE NEXT GENERATION of the CM Plan
I've seen countless sets of requirements and RFIs come my way for
acquiring new CM/ALM tools. However, it is a very rare occasion when I
see a company actually publish (and send out) the project CM Plan to
potential tool vendors. In my most recent encounter of this approach
the pitch was: How would you change this plan based on your CM/ALM
solution for us? This project has it right - not just a set of
requirements, but an actual CM Plan. And not so much "what d...
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 | CM Planning for a Downturn in the Economy
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 ca...
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 | God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen
As a piece of Christmas cheer we bring you a traditional olde English carol. It is believed that this particular carol was sung to programmers by configuration managers to earn additional money during the Christmas season. The lyrics (including mention of Mil-STD-973 and CMM among other themes) are reputed to date back to the 15th century although the author is unknown. We have been lucky enough to track down a recording of this traditional carol - click the start button......
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 | The CMP - An Alternate Approach
Almost everyone who has been involved in Configuration
Management for some time has run across the term Configuration Management Plan
(CMP). Indeed, there are many times
when a CMP is mandated either because of contractual or regulatory
requirements. A CMP is a formal document that describes the Who, What, When,
Where and Why of CM and how it fits within a Project's Life Cycle. The problem
is that they tend to be big, unreadable, take a long time to produce and are
generally out of date a...
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 | Result-driven Testing: Start Adding Value to Your Organization
Within
the test scene there is a vivid discussion about the necessity and use
of a certification model for the test experts. The population of
testers can be roughly divided into two groups: Firstly, a group that
states that it will not do a better job when certified, because the
current certifications like ISTQB and ISEB focus on methods and
terminology, but fail to look at the practical testing skills of the
tester [Bolton, 2008]. Secondly, a group who is pro certification and
regards ...
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 | Configuration Management Primer For Hiring Managers: Two Different Jobs Confused By The Same Title
Your software development and support teams come to you one
day and say they need a configuration management person to manage
infrastructure configuration and releases.
But wait a minute - doesn't the software development team already have a
configuration management person? And
what was it again that she was hired to do?
Oh yeah, software builds. So why
are your teams trying to give this position a configuration management title
too? What really is configura...
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