Project implementation of Software Configuration Management

Have you or one of your programmers said: “The system ran yesterday; I only changed one line.” or “I spent my budget, but I'm not done.” or “I fixed that problem yesterday, but it's back now.” or “I thought it would be a nice feature for the operator, so I added it to the program.” or “Why was this line of code changed? Who did it and when?”?

If these or other similar statements are familiar, then Software Configuration Management is a subject that should interest you. Software Configuration Management (SCM) is a management method that establishes a discipline for the software development process and provides visibility to that process.

The step by step procedures used by a large software organization to resolve some of their development problems will be followed here. The result of their efforts was the formulation of a management method that significantly improved the quality of their software products and reduced the costs. It was learned later that other software organizations had gone through similar processes and arrived at similar results. This new tool is now known as Software Configuration Management.