Software Configuration Management White Papers

Software Configuration Management white papers are in abundance but one thing I have identified is that the majority of these are the vendor specific – our software is the best because type blurb. The independent analysis type whitepapers are a lot fewer and further between type ones.

Software Configuration Management white papers – benefits overall

After reading dozens of white papers, I have notice that most of them have very similar benefits. The benefits for all can be broken down into three groups. Listed below are the typical ones:

Benefits for project managers

When you automate the hand-offs related to changes, you achieve faster code

turnover, shorter development cycles, easier adaptability to market changes

and better use of an individual developer’s special skills. You are able to:

• Prevent unauthorized access to assets
• Account for and report the progress of development efforts
• Coordinate, track and manage change activities

Benefits for developers

Developers have concerns that are different from those of management.

Managing change prevents these common day-to-day aggravations that

developers face in ad hoc team development:

• What happened to this piece of code? It worked yesterday!
• What issues have been assigned to me for resolution?
• What happened to the fix I added to this code last week?
• Did the right changes go into the release?
• Why isn’t that graphic on the website yet?
• I thought there was a bug in this code, but now I can't reproduce it.

Benefits for business managers

Executive management will see benefits for the business overall:

• Ability to deliver revisions, updates and cross-platform versions, faster
• Confidence that each release addresses all the requested changes 
• Higher productivity of a valuable resource talented developers
• Less time wasted fixing old code
• Improved customer satisfaction 
• Confidence that web content is correct and the site is stable