SCM: Status and Future Challenges

Software Configuration Management

Modeling product characteristics is well known to software configuration management (SCM). Modeling process characteristics is relatively new to SCM. Combining process modeling and SCM enhances the current capabilities of SCM. The paper presents product and process models suitable for SCM. The outlined approach, Concert provides building blocks for developing project specific models. Concert's models are described by entity relationship diagrams. In addition, Concert uses the predicate calculus to express model restrictions. Concert offers a seamless integration of product and process modeling. The paper presents a process model for software maintenance that is based on change requests. Such a model helps SCM to recognize the course of a software project early, thus SCM need not determine the development history of a software ex post. The paper describes a tool to manage the presented models and their instances.

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to present the findings of Phase 1 of the research and to identify Australian agile software development organizations having such coexistence of agile and software configuration management (SCM) practices. This study employed “organization size” variable to study the phenomenon and used theory of Lean Thinking as a lens to analyse implementation variations of agile and SCM practices. Design/methodology/approach – For this study, the research design was comprised of three phases. In Phase 1, a quantitative study using an online survey was performed to answer RQ using various statistical techniques. In Phase 2, an initial conceptual model based on a literature review was developed, and then a qualitative study was performed using one longitudinal case study. In Phase 3, another online survey was performed using various parametric statistical techniques to validate and generalize the findings of Phase 1 and 2 and the proposed SLAM traceability model. The scope of this paper is to discuss only Phase 1 and its associated findings. Findings – The results of the analysis indicated that organizations, regardless of their size, frequently use agile practices for their software development operations. On the other hand, larger organizations use SCM practices comparatively more than medium and small organizations. However, traces of customized SCM process were found in most of the respondent (large, medium, and small) organizations, which indicates the coexistence of agile and SCM practices. Research limitations/implications – As there is no known listing or database available for such specialized criteria, a non-probabilistic sampling method was used, in the sense that the selection of members of the sample was arbitrary and subjective instead of a non-random selection from the pool of all agile practitioners in the field. Originality/value – By using the quantitative method approach, this study aims to generate empirical evidence to contribute to the body of knowledge in the relevant areas. On the practical side, this research can also provide support to IT businesses in general, and software development organizations in particular, with the streamlining of the internal operational environment for the facilitation of an adaptable process and the resulting coexistence of value-added agile and SCM practices.

The conventional Software Configuration Management (SCM) tools have shown their weakness in large and complex software systems with the development of modern software. This paper provides a better SCM tool with high availability to facilitate software development process. A novel approach named Quality of Service (QoS)-based SCM (QSCM) is presented, which introduces QoS guarantee techniques at the application level to web-based SCM system in order to improve SCM system?s performance. QSCM classifies users together with SCM activities and treats with requests according to their priority. When the server is overloaded, it stops treatment with new requests so that to avoid from crash. The work described here is a first step towards this goal.

Software reuse has recently been considered the best solution to enhance the productivity of a software development team and to reduce maintenance costs. In addition, software configuration management (SCM) is a central part of software maintenance as it is associated with changing existing software, and is a discipline for controlling these changes and improving the maintenance process, thereby enhancing the quality of a software product. Thus, both software reuse and SCM have been proposed for making a significant improvement in productivity, quality and cost. However, so far these two technologies have been investigated separately. In order for software reuse and SCM to produce effects by synergy, both approaches require to be introduced into a maintenance environment together. Since software reuse and SCM, and software reuse and software maintenance have many similarities and relationships in their activities, these disciplines can be integrated within a software maintenance environment. The authors have therefore developed an integrated process model for maintenance with reuse (MwR) that supports SCM for a reuse library which is actively maintained for use in a maintenance environment. In this paper the MwR model and its prototype are described, followed by evaluation using a case study and conclusions.

The Software Configuration Management (SCM) of the Space Launch Initiative (SLI) Advanced Engineering Environment (AEE) products is performed in a distributed environment-meaning the activities performed during the project lifecycle are across numerous NASA Centers, facilities, organizations, colleges and industry. SCM is the glue that holds the project and products together-especially in a distributed environment. It identifies, controls, accounts, and verified the details of the products; the schedule of activities; the assigned responsibilities; and the required resources, including staff, tools, and computer facilities. Data/document management (DM) captures and conveys the SCM and project efforts. SCM and DM are integrally linked; hence, Software Configuration and Data Management (SCDM). This paper discusses one team's challenges in implementing SCDM in a distributed environment. The distributed nature of the project introduces new opportunities for moving SCDM to the next level of usefulness in today's high-tech development arena. The lessons learned from the implementation of distributed SCDM in support of the SLI AEE Project provide valuable information for future implementations of SCM and DM.

Models for Implementation of Software Configuration Management

When dealing with hundreds of components, keeping track of version changes and various dependency constraints imposed on the system, Software configuration management (SCM) can be defined as the control of the evolution of complex software systems. In recent years, researchers have argued that using ontology to represent and drive knowledge infrastructure of software projects provides procedural knowledge. The advantages of using ontology for SCM are immense and cover various aspects of software development and evolution. In this paper, key challenges must be face for designing and implementing SCM is summarized. One of them is the limited capability on interoperating in different SCM tools. An ontology-based reference knowledge model base for SCM is presented. The reference model allows depicting complex relations between concepts and services operating in configuration management.

Before taking on a new role in any organization, it’s important to understand what makes the Software Configuration Management (SCM) role necessary. Surprisingly enough, you can see the need for SCM in many aspects of the world around you.

Software productivity and quality improvement through software configuration management is based on organized and consistent change management. In change management, artifact identified as configuration item should be able to provide its changed history to the members in group and the members should be able to trace the changes made for the corresponding artifact. General software configuration management systems provide tracing information for artifacts only within the configuration management system, and it does not go further to changes that occur within individual working environment. This paper provides a solution that helps tracing changes that occur not only in configuration management, but also individual artifact’s changes through the integration of configuration management system and individual working environment. A revised version in configuration management system is connected to the artifact version of the working environment by the tagging technique, and traceability can be managed more effectively by sharing the tracing information.

The authors present a proposal of process re-engineering methodology, showing the general scheme of the methodology through a parallel algorithm. The main topic of this article is software quality assurance when issues of software configuration management, using rapid evolutionary prototyping in parallel developments, have to be considered. This methodology — and its underlying algorithm — was used in a project financed by the World Bank and managed by the Federal Ministry of Culture and Education of Argentina. The main goal of the project is to reform and improve the management of educational human resources for the governments of the Argentinian provinces participating in the project. The proposed methodology helps us to shorten the development and release cycles. The need to deliver products in less time means that organizations must work more efficiently and effectively throughout the entire development process and that the efforts for paralleling and controlling (software configuration management) have to be optimized from a time and quality viewpoint (software quality assurance). In fact, this situation has occurred in our project. Applying the steps and criteria of the proposed methodology, our team has gained efficiency and time in obtaining the final product.

A Product Data Management architecture for integrating hardware and software development

Software configuration management (SCM) is the discipline of controlling the evolution of complex software systems. The author surveys the Konfiguration Management System (KMS), a tool that supports the tasks of SCM from the early inception of the software system to the end of maintenance with emphasis on configuration control, program generation, and system delivery. A distinctive feature is the support to customers for adapting the system to their needs and for merging adapted systems to new releases of the original system. KMS has been used to develop software for such applications as CAD, banking, telecommunications, etc. Program generation is discussed along with delivery and maintenance. >

Software industry is slowly starting to adopt the discipline of Software Configuration Management (SCM) to be a part of the daily routines of software development and production. Hardly anybody denies that plenty of advantages can be gained by using SCM capabilities in a company. However, in some occasions a company with a technically capable SCM-process has failed to reach an efficient level of software change process management. The problem with these companies has been a poorly organised collection and analysis of change needs information. The problems of this kind can be avoided by adopting a product and customer oriented view to the definition of the SCM-process.KeywordsProduct ManagementCustomer OrderSoftware IndustrySoftware ProductionChange RequestThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.

The study of Software Configuration Management (SCM) has so far focused on the use of tools, SCM models, strategies, patterns or best practices. There are few industry studies on how an organization actually practices file branching and merging. In this empirical study at Oce, we have observed that some developers create branches freely without regards to their consequences on merging. This contradicts recommended best practices and SCM processes. So we investigate if there are hidden costs in propagating or merging changes at Oce. The investigation led us to understand that branching and merging can be done freely under certain circumstances to provide development concurrency. However, some files cannot be branched freely and it may be better to use recommended practices to edit them. Some roles were also noted to be more affected by branching of files.