SNESCM

Scandinavian Network of Excellence
in
Software Configuration Management

Presentation abstracts:

intCCM, a new kid on the block (René Schaap):
Theme: Configuration Management Certification
Synopsis: Copenhagen (Denmark), March 2006: The iNTCCM association is founded by experts in the field of configuration management. The experts came from Bulgaria, Denmark, France, Germany, Hungary, Poland, Sweden, Switzerland, and the Netherlands. (iNTCCM = iNTernational Certified Configuration Manager)
This presentation informs you about the need and reason why the iNTCCM association is founded, its objectives, which qualification levels are available, the value of international certifications, and how certifications can be achieved.
The iNTCCM association has been set up to bring together configuration management specialists around the world to work on one set of terminology and syllabuses with a view to allow certification in Configuration Management to be internationally recognised and coordinated. The work is highly independent of specific methods, standards and supporting technology.
These international accepted CM qualification schemes provides individuals and organisations the benefits to fill in CM-related positions more effectively, because the iNTCCM certification is the assurance that individuals has met rigorous, peer-developed and reviewed standards endorsed by an international professional body and they have a solid understanding of the configuration management discipline and specific tasks within this discipline.
The association is supported by the iSQI organisation, which is already supporting other certification processes for IT professionals like Certified Tester (ISTQB) and Certified Assessor (INTACS).

Collaboration between industry and academia (Andreas Göransson), (Lars Bendix):
This presentation is based on experience from several years of collaboration in Lund between the CM group at Sony Ericsson and the SCM group at the Department of Computer Science.
We present Sony Ericsson's collaboration with LTH within the SCM area. Why do we do this? What gain is it for Sony Ericsson? Isn't there a danger to open up "our world" to outsiders? The presentation will give you different examples of the way we collaborate, how we use the results we reach within Sony Ericsson and some thoughts about future collaboration.
The days where academics were sitting in their high ivory towers are long gone. We academics have a desire to see our research results put into use - and we can use input for new problems to tackle and we need real-life contexts in which to test our new ideas. But what is it actually that academia can offer industry? How can companies benefit from collaboration with academia? What is it that academia looks for in a perfect partner? And what is it that academia cannot/will not do?

Using Efficient SCM-methods (Thomas Karlkvist):
To establish processes for software configuration management (SCM) is never an easy task, whether in the current project, companywide or even corporatewise. Definitions, approaches and apprehensions of what SCM stands for varies almost with each and every individual company practising software-based systems development. However, what seldom varies is the basic need of supportive methods to accomplish the directives set forth by written or orally defined configuration management (CM) processes. And this spans different business areas as well as in between hardware and software development. And the needs are very similar also for different tools used to support the development efforts:

• There is always a need to find efficient methods for the tools you have at your disposal.

SCM Sanity Check (Thomas Axen):
Based on our strategy and approach, the world still changed around us and we need to adjust our view to make sure that we are on track.
The way we can adjust - and justify the changes we might need do implement - is by using the mindset of holding a "SCM Sanity Check" where we go through all the logged changes and experience that we have to insure that what we do isn't insane.
I will focus on going through some of our best and worst practices that I believe you would be able to use or recognize in your organization.

Changing developers' attitude towards SCM (Otto Vinter):
Software configuration management (SCM) is normally regarded as a quality control discipline focusing on managing changes to products, which have been released to the market. However, with the ever-increasing need for more rapid application development, the role of SCM has changed from primarily a QA function, to a critical part of a development team's daily operation. This means that SCM techniques must be known and used effectively by developers during the development process.
However, most developers (and their managers) regard SCM as merely a repository for their project's code and for internal builds. They are not trained in SCM concepts. They are not aware of how these concepts can help them avoid many of the all too familiar problems when they develop a product in parallel with their team members under time pressure.
This presentation outlines an approach to changing developers' attitude towards SCM through participatory workshops where common problems in the daily life of developers are used to highlight and explain SCM principles and practices. This will enable developers to see the benefits of SCM from their perspective, rather than as some bureaucratic process invented by the QA department.

Practical Continuous Integration (Jonas Blunck):
Continuous Integration is ultimately a practice to help a team reduce project risk and feel safe about the state of their code base. In recent years, a number of products have turned up for automating the practice. One of those is CruiseControl.NET, for the .NET platform, which is free, open-source and relatively easy to get running. We have been using CruiseControl.NET for a couple of years, and have found a number of ways of extending it and improving on the experience. In this session, we thought we'd share some of our experiences and ideas for how to make CruiseControl.NET work with custom build tools, unit testing, custom reporting mechanisms, source control systems and on non-Windows platforms.

Change & Configuration Management in a CMMI 5 organization (Anders Truelsen):
Systematic Software Engineering A/S is the first Danish-owned company to obtain the Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI) 5 appraisal. The appraisal was obtained in 2005 following 7 years and thousand of hours of hard work.
This talk will include the following topics:

• What is it like to work with CM in a CMMI level 5 organization
• How does the CM requirements of CMMI affect developers
• How do we mate CMMI with the desire to remain agile
• How do we manage the CM aspect with 40+ developers working on three different releases, and how does that compare to the needs of a five man project.

Panel discussion on education, certification and career in SCM: panellists are Rene Schaap, SQS Netherlands; Thomas Axen, ATP; Otto Vinter, Software Engineering Mentor; Ulf Asklund, Sony Ericsson.