Configuration Management Essentials

Course List by Job Title Course List by Knowledge Area Seminar Recommendations Public Seminar Calendar Private Software Seminars at Your Location Instructors Seminar Search

Seminars .:. Course List by Knowledge Area .:. Configuration Management Essentials

see related courses

Configuration Management Essentials

email us about private offerings of this seminar

course overview

Configuration management is a lynch pin of successful software projects. Effective software teams manage change well; they know what was changed, when, and by whom. In this class you will learn practical, real-world techniques for controlling and stabilizing your software, and you will gain an understanding of how to draw from both Agile and traditional configuration management practices to create a process that is “right-weight” for you. You will also learn to identify and avoid many classic pitfalls encountered when implementing configuration management.

benefits

Attendees will learn practical techniques for controlling and stabilizing their software development products. They will gain an understanding of configuration management practices that they can use to create the right-weight process for their project.

Attendees will discuss common problems organizations face when implementing a configuration management policy and specific strategies for avoiding or circumventing such classic pitfalls. They will practice many of the techniques under the instructor's guidance and have their personal questions answered by a leading expert in software engineering.

who should attend

This seminar is intended for software engineers, team leaders, programmers, software product managers, and information systems managers.

the seminar includes the following topics

Software Configuration Management Overview

What is configuration management
1. Why is it needed
2. What are the typical objections to SCM
Overview of SCM activities
- What are the top-level activities
- How do they interact
- How do they change during a product's lifecycle
Sample SCM plan

Tracking and Controlling Changes

Purpose of change control
Where do changes come from
When do items fall under change control
- Revision control vs. change control
- Problems caused by base lining too early
Change control process
- The change control board
- Right-sizing the change control process
- Decision-making models
Tracking change request to resolution
- CxOne corrective activity management
- What are corrective activities
- CAM work flow and states
Reporting the status about configuration items
Metrics that can be collected for tracking and control

Building and Releasing Systems

Building the system
- What does this mean
- Build and smoke test
- Collecting size data to your build system
Releasing the system
- Release activities
- What to include in release notes
- Testing the release
Verifying the release
- Planning and conducting release audits -- Functional and Physical Configuration Audits

Managing Configurations under Special Conditions

Developing software across departments or across multiple teams and time zones
- Dividing the system to support parallel development
- Source control activities
- Main lines, development lines, and private work spaces
Managing multiple releases
- Versions, revisions, and variants
- Post-development support
Managing component-based systems and outsourced development

Identifying Configuration Items

Identifying items to be controlled and why it is important
Important characteristics that are needed to define configuration items
How does this change over a product's lifecycle

Relationship to Other Processes

SCM interaction with other software development and product lifecycle practices
Maturity models and international standards

Keys to Success

Introducing configuration management practices
Critical success factors for implementing configuration management

available instructors

Eric Rimbey

pmi information

Integration Management and Scope Management

6 PDU

PMI PDU Reporting Instructions

questions?