Configuration Management

Change is a constant

It used to be so simple - there was an application, it ran on a single machine, it had a user base of maybe twenty people. Maintenance of the application was easy. Managing IT projects was easy.

Not any more. Now applications run on a heterogeneous network of servers and clients. With e-commerce your user base can easily run into millions. Your production system needs maintaining and your next release needs developing - each without interfering with the other. When a fix is needed to production code it's needed now. You haven't the time to reconstruct what's running in production.

Sound familiar?

These, and many other issues, are common problems for IT managers. With large development teams working on different projects using a common code base, mistakes and delays are bound to happen. And in today's world, mistakes and delays are expensive. Sometimes, very expensive. And, at a time when IT budgets are being cut, expensive mistakes and delays are not acceptable.

Configuration Management Systems take the pain out of managing complex IT projects. Like source control, CMS holds multiple versions of the code. Unlike source control, they extend this concept to mimic the entire application development life cycle. At a glance you can see what code is in Production, what code is in Test and what code is in Development. Now imagine being able to do this for your current release, your next maintenance release and your next major release.

Furthermore, the best CM tools are based around a relational database. Now you can use your existing reporting tools to analyse the development lifecycle - how much has changed, how long did it take, how long have we got to go? By showing such reports graphically, management can gain an instant insight into development progress.

Now look at your current solution. Is it CM based? If it isn't, then the question you should be asking is not "Can we afford to implement CM?" The question should be "Can we afford not to?"

Trinem Consulting specialise in all aspects of Configuration Management. We are valued partners to Computer Associates in their AllFusion Harvest Change Manager product. We offer training and consultancy in the product itself as well as in Configuration Management principles and Best Practice.

View the Trinem White Paper on Configuration Management (MS Word).