Software configuration management

Presentation on Software configuration management 

The topic of my today's presentation is Software configuration management. Firstly we see that what is meant by configuration?

What is configuration?

The way a computer system or program is prepared for particular use is known as configuration.For example we will see that a simple USB have multiple functions i.e we can store data or make it boot-able drive,so in both cases we actually configure that USB to our point of use.

What is Software Configuration Management?

In software engineering,configuration management is a task of tracking and controlling the change in software system.

or

Configuration management is concerned  with the policies,processes and tools for managing changing software system.

Implementation of Configuration Management 

• Configuration management is useful for individual projects or personal software process (PSP) as it is easy for one person to forget what changes have been made.
• It is also essential for Team projects or Team software process (TSP) where several developers are working at same time on a software system.Sometimes,these developers are all working at same place but sometimes development team are distributed with members in different locations across world.

Standards for configuration management

• IEEE 828-(1998)
• IEEE 1042

Activities involves in Configuration Management

There are several activities involve in configuration management.These are given below:-

Change Management

The management of change and development within a business or similar organization.

Version Management

This involves keeping track of multiple versions of system components and ensure that changes have been made to components.

System building

It is the process of integrating program components,data and libraries and then compiling and linking these to create executable system.

Release Management

It is the process of managing software releases from development stage to software release.It is new but rapidly growing discipline with in software engineering. 

Software configuration management

Configuration management in terms of Quality

Configuration management is sometimes considered to be a part of Software quality management with same manager having both:

• Quality management responsibilities
• Configuration management responsibilities

When a new version of software has been implemented,it is handed over by the development team to quality assurance team (QA) .The QA team cheaks that system quality is acceptable. If so,all changes to system have to agreed on and recorded before they are implemented.

Terminologies

One of the problems of configuration management is that different companies talk about the same concept using different term,so that's why different terminologies were introduced.

Configuration Item

Anything associated with a software project e.g design,code,test data,document, etc that has been placed in configuration control.

Base-Line

A specification or product that has been formally reviewed and agreed by responsible management, that thereafter serves as the basis for further development.

It should always be possible to re-create a base-Line from its constituent components.

Version

The re-release of a configuration item is called its version.Versions have always a unique identifiers,which is often composed of the configuration item name plus version number.

Release

A version of a system that has been released to customers for use.

Main-Line

A sequence of base-lines representing different versions of system.