Consultor Eletrônico

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GOAL:

RoundTable. Software Configuration Management (SCM) Overview.

CAUSE:

Here is an overview of what SCM (Software Configuration Management) covers within RoundTable.

FIX:

Software Configuration Management. (SCM).

RoundTable is a Team Oriented extention for the Progress development environment that provides extensive Software Configuration Management (SCM) and programming productivity tools.

SCM is the discipline of managing the entire life cycle of a software project.
SCM is comprosed of four well defined activities:
1. Configuration Identification.
2. Configuration Control.
3. Configuration Auditing
4. Configuration Status Accounting.

The ideal SCM system allows you to simplify, streamline and seamlessly integrate the management of the software life cycle into the development environment so that business managers can play an active and meaningful role in the process of software definition, development and maintenance.

RoundTable allows management to become more involved in the software development process without compromising or inhibiting the creativity or productivity of the engineering staff.

RoundTable makes it possible for everyone involved in the SCM process to communicate and share information electronically.
One of the most difficult steps in implementing SCM is choosing the correct SCM model for your organization.
The essential issue in designing the model is how much of the configuration auditing process to apply and how many workspaces to implement.

Configuration Identification:
Configuration identification is simply the identification of a relative arrangement of software system components. An important part of configuration is the realization that a software project is comprised of much more than source code.

A software project might include:
1.  Contract or marketing specifications.
2.  Functional requirements documentation
3.  Architectural design documentation.
4.  QA guidelines.
5.  Coding standards documentation.
6.  Component analysis documentation.
7.  Component design documentation.
8.  Source code / Binary code.
9.  Tools configurations used to procedures system build.
10. Test data suites.
11. User documentation.

The configuration identification framework must provide an intellectual and mathematical basis for describing the relative arrangement of these components at a specific point in the development process.

SCM Baselines:
FB Functional baseline (often called requirements specifications).
AB Allocated baseline (often called functional specification).
DB Design baseline (often called engineering baseline).
Alpha Alpha baseline
Beta Beta baseline
PB Product baseline (golden master).

Baselines are often incorrectly referreed to as milestones. However, milestones identify points in the project schedule where you reach specifically identified goals. Often, there are many project milestones within each project baseline. Configuration auditing is the process of ensuring that a system does contain everything implied by it's baseline status.

Configuration Control
The Configuration Control Board (CCB) plays a central role in the configuration control process.

The CCB approves, monitors, and control:
1. The conversion of design objects into system (software) configuration items.
2. Changes to the system.

Configuration Auditing
Configuration auditing is the process of confirming that all system components that should be in a given baseline are in the baseline. When a baseline audit is completed, the baseline is said to be sanctioned, RoundTable provides workspaces, product, and task reports that identify the status of each registered component(object).
Configuration auditing is the mechanism management uses to ensure that a software project is on track and building what is actually required.

Configuration Status Accounting.
Configuration. status accounting ensures that a complete and accessible record of the changes to a software system and reasons for such changes are available.

Benefits of SCM
1. Improve profitability.
2. Save time.
3. Reduce the amount and improve the quality of communication between management and programmers.
4. Reduce the cost of producing software.
5. Achieve a net increase.
6. Shorten the development cycle time from design to delivery.
7. Improve the accuracy of the estimating process.
8. Improve the project management information flow within the development, testing and deployment cycle.
9. Make the version control process as transparent as possible.
10. Make higher-quality information quickly available to each team member.
11. Make accessing system configuration information a natural and simple part of the development process. .