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Implementation Excellence Envelope Please - 2007 CM Predictions
Implementation Excellence Envelope Please - 2007 CM Predictions
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It is the
beginning of another year. Some of us
have concrete Configuration Management (CM) efforts ahead of us and
have begun the
planning process. Others are looking
across the CM field and considering strategies for CM improvements.
What are some of the trends in the field? What are some of the more
common improvements
which companies are looking into? As we gaze in the horizon, what do
we think
will be hot in the CM landscape and improve our lives? 
While cost will continue to play a key role in 2007, companies are focusing more and more on productivity gains in the form of painless integrations with one eye on the application lifecycle. With this in mind, what shifts might we see in CM for 2007? The envelope please... The Predictions As we open up the envelope, I see three areas of promise in the CM space. Prediction #1: More focus from CM to ALM 2007 will continue to see CM tools provide more lifecycle functionality or become part of a lifecycle tool set. This will support the end-to-end view that many customers are looking for when managing their software development. This also includes the continued shift where the consumers are looking for CM tools that better integrate with other tools across the application lifecycle and tools that require less integration effort. Here are examples of several vendors that have expanded their CM tool offering into the ALM space:
Prediction #2: Focus on Centralized CM environments There are two reasons why I predict a movement to more centralized CM environments (aside from the fact that I know of several companies that are beginning to move in this direction). First, as companies get larger, it becomes harder to manage more hardware and administer multiple environments. Second, to reduce the time of getting an application code base into a CM environment, providing readily available shared CM environments saves time in the application CM infrastructure setup phase. Centralization helps in both accounts. In the past several years, server consolidation efforts have been common. More recently, focus is on standardizing technologies and running these technologies on fewer servers. Centralizing CM environments also has distinct advantages. Assuming there is a standard CM technology, then established shared CM environments (a.k.a., co-ops, ASPs, etc) can benefit application development in numerous ways. First, there is a significant reduction in time in setting up a CM repository and CM processes for an application (assuming the centralized service provider is efficient). Instead of going thru the full process of acquiring a server and setting up the CM technology along with all of the CM processes, a new application team can simply have a repository established in minutes and used the already established CM processes that are in place and in most cases, tried and tested. Second, there is the ability of sharing licenses which reduce overall license cost (assuming the CM technology uses a flooding license scheme verses either a node locked license or a per user license scheme). This promotes economies of scale, since most people do not need to hold their CM tool licenses for a long time, and the same number of licenses can support more people around the clock. Prediction #3: Focus on Build automation agility in CM How many of you have heard of Agile? How many of you would like to taste agile without necessarily plunging in head first into an agile methodology. It is for this reason and the push for continuous integrations and builds to reduce the size of changes, where build automation will become more common in the future. In addition, with strides into agile and shorter release cycles, there becomes a need to build much more frequently then in the past. Today, many CM professionals have handcrafted their own level of build automation. This requires on-going in-house maintenance and support. Recently, vendors and open source enthusiast have established tools that promote continuous integration and builds which provide an early (and continuous) view into whether the applications builds and smoke tests correctly. I think in 2007, we may see a significant increase in the usage of continuous build automation tools. Here are examples of several tool offerings that provide continuous build capabilities:
Summary To summarize the view into 2007, I predict we will see movements in the following areas:
References
Mario Moreira is a Columnist for the CM Journal (www.cmcrossroads.com), VP of Technology, an Author of CM publications, and has worked in the SCM and Release Management field since 1986. He has experience with numerous SCM technologies and processes and has implemented SCM on over 100 applications/products, which include establishing global SCM infrastructures. He has an MA in Mass Communication with an emphasis on communication technologies. Mario also brings years of Project Management, Software Quality Assurance, Requirement Management, Architecture, IT Governance, facilitation, and team building skills and experience. Mario has authored a SCM book entitled, “Software Configuration Management Implementation Roadmap”. It can be found at www.wiley.com, www.wileyeurope.com, and www.amazon.com (search for Mario Moreira). It includes step-by-step guidance for implementing SCM at the organization, application, and project level with labor-saving templates on CD. You may reach Mr. Moreira by email at Mario.Moreira@cmcrossroads.com
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| Last Updated on Thursday, 26 July 2007 17:55 |
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