sneSCM

Scandinavian Network of Excellence
in
Software Configuration Management

Time: Wednesday, March 10th, 2021, 17:00-18:00 (CET).

Place: video conferencing at your own computer.

Title: Bill of Materials in a Software context

Host: Lars Bendix - Computer Science, Lund University

Bill of Materials (BoM) is a well established and widely used concept in the Hardware world. Until a couple of weeks ago I thought the same was true in the Software world. However, during a discussion with a configuration mangement practitioner (from mainly the Software world) I discovered that we had wildly different opinions on the use and value of BoMs in software development.

He thinks that they are kind of useless and obsolete - I believe that it is one of the most important and useful concepts (or almost) - and that is what I teach the students on my configuration management course. However, from other discussions with configuration management practitioners (both Hardware and Software) it seems like I may be wrong. That BoMs are known and used only in the Hardware world.

Is that really so? Should it be so? Can we "steal" the concept of a BoM from the Hardware world and turn it into something useful and valuable also for software development? These are some of the things that I would be interested in exploring with you.

Clearly I have some opinions (and some slides) - and besides that a couple of prior art for things that could be Software BoMs (but are not called that) and one more current (January 2021) example. But mostly I would be interested in listening to your experience as a practitioner.

Presentation and discussions will be in Italian.

Registration is mandatory by email to Lars Bendix (bendix@sneSCM.org).