Configuration Management Best Practices: Practical Methods that Work in the Real World

by Bob Aiello, Leslie Sachs

Successfully Implement High-Value Configuration Management Processes in Any Development Environment As IT systems have grown increasingly complex and mission-critical, effective configuration management (CM) has become critical to an organization’s success. Using CM best practices, IT professionals can systematically manage change, avoiding unexpected problems introduced by changes to hardware, software, or networks. Now, today’s best CM practices have been gathered in one indispensable resource showing you how to implement them throughout any agile or traditional development organization. Configuration Management Best Practices is practical, easy to understand and apply, and fully reflects the day-to-day realities faced by practitioners. Bob Aiello and Leslie Sachs thoroughly address all six “pillars” of source code management, build engineering, environment configuration, change control, release engineering, and deployment. They demonstrate how to implement CM in ways that support software and systems development, meet compliance rules such as SOX and SAS-70, anticipate emerging standards such as IEEE/ISO 12207, and integrate with modern frameworks such as ITIL, COBIT, and CMMI. Coverage includes Configuration Management Best Practices is the essential resource for everyone concerned with from CTOs and CIOs to development, QA, and project managers and software engineers to analysts, testers, and compliance professionals. Praise for Configuration Management Best Practices “Understanding change is critical to any attempt to manage change. Bob Aiello and Leslie Sachs’s Configuration Management Best Practices presents fundamental definitions and explanations to help practitioners understand change and its potential impact.” –Mary Lou A. Hines Fritts, CIO and Vice Provost Academic Programs, University of Missouri-Kansas City “Few books on software configuration management emphasize the role of people and organizational context in defining and executing an effective SCM process. Bob Aiello and Leslie Sachs’s book will give you the information you need not only to manage change effectively but also to manage the transition to a better SCM process.” –Steve Berczuk, Agile Software Developer, and author of Software Configuration Management Effective Teamwork, Practical Integration “Bob Aiello and Leslie Sachs succeed handsomely in producing an important book, at a practical and balanced level of detail, for this topic that often ‘goes without saying’ (and hence gets many projects into deep trouble). Their passion for the topic shows as they cover a wonderful range of topics–even culture, personality, and dealing with resistance to change–in an accessible form that can be applied to any project. The software industry has needed a book like this for a long time!” –Jim Brosseau, Clarrus Consulting Group, and author of Software Taking Ownership for Success “A must read for anyone developing or managing software or hardware projects. Bob Aiello and Leslie Sachs are able to bridge the language gap between the myriad of communities involved with successful Configuration Management implementations. They describe practical, real world practices that can be implemented by developers, managers, standard makers, and even Classical CM Folk.” –Bob Ventimiglia, Bobev Consulting “A fresh and smart review of today’s key concepts of SCM, build management, and related key practices on day-to-day software engineering. From the voice of an expert, Bob Aiello and Leslie Sachs offer an invaluable resource to success in SCM.” –Pablo Santos Luaces, CEO of Codice Software “Bob Aiello and Leslie Sachs have a gift for stimulating the types of conversation and thought that necessarily precede needed organizational change. What they have to say is always interesting and often important.” –Marianne Bays, Business Consultant, Manager and Educator

Genres: Software

272 pages, Paperback

First published August 20, 2010

Reviews

[Glenn Burnside · Rating 4 out of 5]

A decent book if you want a bird's eye view of the six pillars of configuration management, especially if you're working within a large Enterprise IT environment and need to be concerned with things like Sarbanes/Oxley audits, ITIL process implementation, or CMMI ratings. Not a great place to start if you're trying to answer questions for your dev team like "Should we use Subversion or Git for source control?" or "Should we use NAnt or MSBuild or PSake for our builds?"

The first half of the book, focusing on those core six pillars:
1. Source code management
2. Build Engineering
3. Environment Configuration
4. Change Control
5. Release Engineering
6. Deployment

Was a lot more valuable than the end chapters, which were more "fluffy" - covering psychology of configuration management, standards conformance, and the like. These are topics that are likely only relevant in very large environments, where you're trying to bring these ideas to bear not on a single team or for a single product, but for a huge, distributed organization.

[Apa · Rating 4 out of 5]

The book does what is says on the cover. Tightly packed with lot of information but only 200+ pages. If you have to write a CMP, are curious what configuration status accounting means or what's an configuration item, read this. Others need only to skim and pick the bits concerning them.

Also, it's not only documents and processes: Being a CM means that usually you have to use other methods than just telling people what to do to keep in line - there's a whole chapter about psychology, personalities etc.

[Joni Malén · Rating 2 out of 5]

Starts out strong with an overview of the components of configuration management, but in the latter half devolves into a hodgepodge of surface level tangents and personal anecdote. Fluff factor of 40-50%.

[Katee Culp · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ok