Happy New Year and the hope of a better year ahead! Is your Configuration Management (CM) capability able to handle the changes within your organization? As we gaze into the horizon, what do we think will be hot in the CM landscape and where is the CM field headed? What is the CM forecast? Let’s take a look into the crystal ball!

My forecast will focus on:

• Agile in the forefront of CM
• More CM books to help you Deploy
• Extending the CM reach into ALM and beyond
• What other CM Professionals are thinking

Prediction #1:  Agile in the forefront of CM
I predict that we will continue to see a strong focus on Agile in the way we approach and deploy CM.  Organizations are seeing the benefits of Agile and there continues to be a significant increase in adopting Agile.  Some say Agile is mainstream.  Others say that while it is not yet mainstream, it is becoming a significant part of an organization’s common processes.  Let’s see what some literature says:

• According to a Paul Krill, he examined a Forrester report which surveyed nearly 1,300 IT professionals.  In this case, 35 percent of respondents stated that Agile most closely reflects their development process.

- Agile software development is now mainstream - A new Forrester report finds widespread use of the iterative software development processes, by Paul Krill, InfoWorld, January 2010.  See: http://www.infoworld.com/d/developer-world/agile-software-development-now-mainstream-190

• According to an article by Mario Moreira, he asks of those teams who have implemented Agile, can they recognize common steps to a successful Agile implementation?  Then he asks, whether those that have implemented Agile have actually made the cultural shift (aka, Agile mindset or self-empowered teams, servant-leader mentality, etc.) particularly at the more senior levels.  Mario considers these core aspects of whether Agile is mainstream or not.

- Agile Adoption Roadmap – by Mario E. Moreira, Agile Journal, November 2010.  See: http://www.agilejournal.com/articles/columns/column-articles/3393-agile-adoption-roadmap

The implication is that Agile is here to stay and in a big way.  CM must adapt to provide the integrity of CM but in a leaner more streamlined manner.

Prediction #2:  More CM books to help you Deploy
Configuration Management is a field that is pervasive in software engineering.  With the shift to Agile comes the need to adapt and change and become lean.  These are challenges in the CM community.  The good news is that there are newer books on the market that help us address both the deployment of CM as well as the integration of Agile and CM.  With that in mind, here are some new CM books as well as blogs that focus on CM and Agile:

• “Configuration Management Best Practices: Practical Methods that Work in the Real World” by Bob Aiello and Leslie Sach.  The materials in this book are practical, easy to understand, and fully reflects the day-to-day realities faced by practitioners.  It addresses all six “pillars” of CM: source code management, build engineering, environment configuration, change control, release engineering, and deployment. 
• “Adapting Configuration Management for Agile Teams” by Mario E. Moreira.  This book provides both a CM Primer and an Agile Primer for those wishing to learn more about each topic followed by a chapter on how they can work well together. It then focuses on infrastructure for Agile and how using the cloud can reduce technical debt.  It follows this with a robust chapter on adapting the various CM practices for Agile.  It ends with chapters on identifying good tools for Agile (including CM tools) and adapting to standards and frameworks in an Agile environment.
  
• Accident Simplicity – a blog on thoughts about agile software development, software configuration management, and the intersection between the two.  Consider visiting and joining this blog at: http://steveberczuk.blogspot.com/ 
• CM for Agile - A blog dedicated to all things Agile and Configuration Management (CM), and sometimes when the two converge.  It also includes discussions on adopting Agile.  Consider  visiting and joining this blog at: http://cmforagile.blogspot.com/

Prediction #3:  Extending the CM reach into ALM and beyond
As we continue into the future, we see CM extending into the Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) space and then see ALM extended into a more unified approach.  Integration across engineering areas helps teams streamline their processes and reduces the effort of implementation and maintenance of manual integrations.  Two such examples of extending the reach include:

• Rational Team Concert (RTC) provides a lean collaborative lifecycle management solution with agile and formal planning, project reporting, process workflow, work item management, source code management and build management, in a single integrated product supporting all popular platforms.
• Look for innovative tool companies like AccuRev and AnthillPro establish Agile ALM solutions focusing on source code management and continuous integration and build as its core for organizations looking to improve and scale their Agile processes while still maintaining control.

Prediction #4:  What other CM Professionals are thinking
As I was considering the direction of Configuration Management, I reached out to a few CM professionals (with significant experience in CM) to get their perspective on the future of CM.  Here are their thoughts:

“Agile will continue to be hot topic for 2011. More and more companies will adopt Agile methodology for both new products and existing products. This will push the demand for good ALM (Application Lifecycle Management) tool, the tool that will provide collaboration technology platform and integrations. CM tool will be included as part of the tool.”  - Yuehui “Pauline” Tao (16 years of CM experience)

“Configuration Management will become a critical factor in helping to roll out and sustain Agile software development environments.  The CM tools will be critical to the success of the fluid dynamic of the Agile development team. Configuration Management will have to become fluid and adaptable while maintaining the integrity and security of the end product. Rather than CM tools being home-grown and highly customized, we will see more CM capabilities being automated and standardized.  CM will become better defined at the industry level and provide a larger benefit for an entire organization at the company level down to the team level rather that only at the individual team level.  This will present many technical and ideological challenges that will have to be overcome, but it is on the horizon.”  - Rena Hryckewicz (13 years of CM experience)

“In 2011, I see the ALM tool silos finally breaking down as increasingly more companies begin to look for a single ALM solution tool like Rational Team Concert (RTC) and the entire Jazz Platform.  Historically, companies have evaluated, selected, and purchased best-of-breed tools within separate silos (requirements management, defect management, source code management, build automation, test automation, project planning and reporting, to name a few), and then developed and supported custom integrations to plug them all together.  It doesn't matter how great the individual tools or  integrations are, companies can rarely tell "the current overall project status".  As companies and projects require more accountability, a better solution is needed.  The next generation of software development tools is now upon us.  A single ALM tool can now be used that supports all these silos and eliminates the custom integrations offering superior functionality with real-time project status and reporting.  It is destined to be a great year for the new generation of ALM tools.”  - David Darby (21 years of CM experience)

Summary
As we look into 2011, what is the CM forecast and what is your forecast in CM?  Agility will continue to show up in various forms in both the Configuration Management (CM) and Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) contexts.  Also, books such as “Adapting Configuration Management for Agile Teams” and blogs will help CM and Agile teams understand and adapt to Agile methods and books like “Configuration Management Best Practices: Practical Methods that Work in the Real World” to help you deploy CM in a lean manner.  What is your organization’s CM forecast?  Whether your forecast is sunny or cloudy (or both), consider flexibility, adaptability, and agility in driving your business!  Have a productive 2011!!!

References

• AccuRev - http://www.accurev.com
• Rational Team Concert (RTC) - http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/rational/products/rtc/
• CM for Agile - http://cmforagile.blogspot.com/
  
• Accident Simplicity – http://steveberczuk.blogspot.com/
  
• Agile software development is now mainstream - A new Forrester report finds widespread use of the iterative software development processes, by Paul Krill, InfoWorld, January 2010 - http://www.infoworld.com/d/developer-world/agile-software-development-now-mainstream-190
  
• Agile Adoption Roadmap – by Mario E. Moreira, Agile Journal, November 2010.  See: http://www.agilejournal.com/articles/columns/column-articles/3393-agile-adoption-roadmap

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