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CM JournalEach 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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Agile Development and SCM - April 2003

Agile Development and SCM

Snowbird, UT, February 2001, a group of seventeen prestigious experts in object-oriented development practices, patterns, and methodologies congregated to discuss "lightweight" methods. They chose the term "agile" to describe this emerging development style and created the Agile Manifesto to proclaim their fundamental values and principles. At the time, "agile" was already a buzzword in the business world, steeped in the theory of "complex adaptive systems", and "gelled, self-organizing teams" that were "nimble" at responding to and leading change in order to “thrive on chaos."

Led by the popularity and success of eXtreme Programming (XP), and espoused by the same respected experts who introduced software designers to patterns, agile methods like XP, SCRUM, Crystal, DSDM, FDD, and ASD have gained increasing popularity and notoriety! On the surface, most agile development practices are not new. And some agile attitudes seem like symptoms of a strong counter-reaction by frustrated developers to having witnessed the SEI CMM misused and abused far too many times.

But beneath all the hype lies something new and powerful that challenges the prevailing notions of software development as manufacturing, and the high cost of change due to failed phase-containment and resulting rework. Agile methods emphasize people, and a “lean” approach to process and documentation. By relying upon intense collaboration and hyper-frequent feedback, they claim the "high cost of change" curve can be flattened! (They also boast a growing body of evidence to support such claims.)

Foreword by Brad Appleton

This month the Crossroads News writers discuss the issues surrounding SCM for agile development projects and how to make SCM itself be more agile. We also welcome author and SCM evangelist Brad Appleton as our newest Contributing Editor with his regular column Agile SCM.

We want to hear what Agile SCM means to you and your organization, so we will continue the discussions in the CM Crossroads Forums and on the CM-Wiki so you might get in on the action.

I value your input and comments as to how we can improve this service. Please send your email to This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it - Patrick Egan


New Articles
Agile Configuration Management Environments
How can software configuration management be compatible with agile software development? Aren't the two diametrically opposed to one another? Sometimes it may seem that way. There is a commonly perceived tension between SCM and development agility that makes it difficult to achieve an effective yet precarious “equilibrium” between the two:
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Behaviorally Speaking: Agile Processes Can You Understand and Evaluate if They are Right for Your or

When our Editor-in-Chief mentioned that this month's issue would focus on Agile processes I groaned and thought to my self, here we go again – another fad – another pop attempt at a process model. The last thing that I need is to waste time on a useless attempt at reinventing the wheel (or software development process). So, I took a look at Agile processes (e.g. XP and FDD) and I'd like to share some initial observations. Much of what is discussed in the literature is watered d...
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Making SCM Agile

When the notion of implementing software configuration management (SCM) on a project is considered, the first thing that usually comes to mind is a methodology that uses a generous amount of process and documentation.
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Right-Sizing Software Configuration Management for Agile Projects

Software Configuration Management (SCM) implementations often apply tools and processes to projects, arguing that it's “the right thing to do.” Some of these tools and processes can dramatically decrease the development team's velocity and increase overall cost to the project while gaining only marginal benefits, if any at all. Any time an Agile development project implements new processes and/or tools, the team must measure the benefit over the cost, keeping in mind the fund...
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HR Corner: Sharing the nightmare of being fired
One of the things that I love most about writing for CM Crossroads is that I get many emails from readers commenting on what I have written. This makes the effort fun for me personally and sometimes I find myself really touched by the notes and comments that I receive. One of the recent emails that I received described how Susan (not her real name) felt when she was told that she was being laid off from her job. For many of us this is the stuff that nightmares are made of and, frankly, Susan's s...
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Employers Need to Bring Hiring Criteria Into Information Age

Are there new circumstances we must consider when searching for top employee talent?There certainly are. Today's employee candidates come with new expectations and circumstances we have either refused to acknowledge or have completely overlooked. The 21st Century employee candidate is no longer looking for a lifelong career and is not willing to continuously sacrifice his or her personal and/or family life for the betterment of the corporation.
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