Tuesday, July 21, 2009

What is a CM Tool?

Does this title sound silly? I mean, doesn’t everyone know what a Configuration Management (CM) tool is? Isn’t a Configuration Management CM tool something that provides version control functionality? Well, the short answer is yes (in part) but only in its most simplistic form. CM as a discipline goes well beyond simple version control. It is important to look beyond what vendors define as classic CM tools and consider CM in terms of the full practice and processes they offer. CM at its very essence covers identification, control, audit, and report. Many would expand control to include version control, change control, change management, build management, and release engineering. Now the answer to “what is a CM tool” becomes complex.

Agreeing on exactly all of the CM capabilities is not the point. The point is to ensure you are clear on what possible CM (or CM-related) capabilities there are and then deciding which ones are important to you. By first identifying and understanding the capabilities, provides a good starting point to identifying your needs and then further drilling down to capture requirements for a CM tool evaluation. More details on this topic can be found at: http://www.cmcrossroads.com/article/what-cm-tool.

Thoughts? Feel free to share with others.

1 comment:

  1. Appication development has changed a lot after its discovery, more and more tools have been introduced. Now a days we have life-cycle tools that are fully integrated and provide capabilities for most of the roles in ALM. The most recent tool used is ALM 2.0 and it is for the modern development communities.configuration management

    ReplyDelete