SNESCM

Scandinavian Network of Excellence in Software Configuration Management

Presentation abstracts:

SCM for Agile Methods (Torbjörn Ekman):
We give a description of the general principles that should guide SCM on Agile projects. In any kind of project there is a need to follow SCM and to use SCM for support. Since Agile projects differ radically from traditional projects, SCM should be done differently on Agile projects.
All people on Agile projects must know SCM as they do not have specialised roles, but must cover everything from coding through Quality Assurance to release management, and even if they had only a coding role, SCM is fundamental to support practices like Collective Code Ownership and Continuous Integration.
There does exist knowledge about how to carry out SCM on Agile projects, but it is either tacit, scattered around in literature or in the form of examples. In this presentation, we collect the current knowledge and present it in the form of explicit guiding principles.

Automatic Software Integration (Axel Bengtsson), (Ola Olsson):
One of the main tasks of an SCM group consists of organizing and controlling the development of the software and the integration of changes into the code base.
But what if the developer would like some feedback on the new implementation and the SCM team is not available at that particular time? Is it perhaps possible to automatically classify changes, make simple builds, smoke tests and send the new build to system test?
The purpose of our thesis project was to find a method that allows the SCM group to use automatic integration. More builds of more variants as often as possible would save a lot of time as well as improving quality assurance in the various software projects. Besides it would also facilitate faster feedback than before to the developers and tighten the loop from developers to the integration of the code.

Build Tools (Nadim Khemir):
After a compiler, a test system and a text editor, the most important tool for software development is a build system which permits reproducibility and guarantees the correctness of a system. Many build systems are based on venerable but passed technologies that do not fit the complexity of current systems and the expectation of their users. Build systems are often handled by specialists instead of being made accessible to the end user (programer, SCM). PBS is a build system which tries to fullfil the expectation of the end user for complex and big (in lines of code) systems.

Subversion - what's New and what's Old (Lars Bendix):
Subversion has been hyped as the successor of CVS - but what is the truth about that? What is really new (and better) in Subversion and what is "just as it used to be"? In the talk we also outline some of the new ideas behind Subversion in general terms, such that you might get an idea of how to "translate" these ideas and best practices into other tools you might happen to use.

A Day in the Life of an SCM Strategist (Ulf Asklund):
Is it possible to support projects with 24/7 CM support with a CM group distributed at four sites in different time zones? How can we trace the issues being found in one variant of a product and their implementation in all other products sharing parts of the affected code currently implemented in different branches? How can we produce a correct release documentation?
How can we optimize/minimize the tests required for several products built and released from the same (cluster) source code? What is the best branching/merging strategy to support many products with different release dates being developed, integrated and released from the same source code? Do we have enough of build servers?
At Sony Ericsson there is a role called CM Strategist, having the privilege of finding solutions for these and other very interesting questions. In this talk, we will outline some of them and open up for a discussion about the scope of CM strategies - what can actually be controlled and improved by strategies and what is simply the law of (CM) nature?

SCM's Cultural and Technical Influence on an Organization (Thomas Axen):
To give a snapshot view of where ATP are on their SCM approach, by showing the activities and risks that we are facing today and by showing one of our SCM setups.

SCM Metrics - and Metrics from SCM (Ulf Steen), (Dag Ehnbom):
Metrics is a widely used technique for estimation of tasks, diagnostication of processes and measuring the effect of changes to processes and tools. Traditionally SCM has supplied data and metrics to other people through the Status Accounting activity, but we could also service ourselves through the use of metrics to improve our SCM processes.
However, the problem is what should we measure and for what purposes. In this presentation, we talk about several possible SCM-specific metrics that we have found and go into detail with some of the metrics that we have actually tried out.

international Certified Configuration Manager (intCCM): (Lars Bendix):
A group of European SCM professionals (some of whom participated in last year's SCM day) have joined forces to create intCCM (international Certified Configuration Manager) - a non-profit organization whose purpose is the promotion of professional further education and assessment of people in Configuration Management. This presentation will explain the background for intCCM and its work, show the present state of work and discuss possible ways for the future development of intCCM with the audience.