SNESCM: Scandinavian Network of Excellence in Software Configuration Management

Scandinavian Network of Excellence
in
Software Configuration Management

Scandinavian SCM day

Presentation abstracts:

Configure your CI and VCS for full automation (Joachim Nilsson):
Full automation of the test and release handling is here now. How does your projects compare to what can be done? In this presentation, I will show some good examples that have been used in some of the projects I participated in. The presentation is based on a one track strategy using Git with parallel branches for different test scopes. Let us then create a good discussion on what more can be achieved to reach an automation level that fits our needs.

Automating unit integration and testing (Thomas Karlkvist):
In medium to large development teams, asynchrounous development is more often the rule than the exception. This places high demands on the development environment to maintain efficiency and quality in the making of the product. It is important that the different developers and development teams can make their contributions to and from a common, well tested and verified integrated product repository. This presentation describes a solution for achieving automated unit integration and testing, in which test benches and automated regression test environments for the individual development teams are integrated with the contributions from other development teams.

"RAM Capability Matrix" - an agile and versatile approach to assess IT disciplines (René Schaap):
After the economic crisis many organisations still struggle with the balance between short term result-driven approaches and process improvement models. Although almost none of the organisations doubt the benefits of improving to a higher process maturity, the usage of current models like CMMi and SPICE, are for some organisations an overkill to assess organisation units or even specific processes. Organisations also hesitate because these models are focused on processes and not specifically on human and technology implementation aspects; these aspects are considered elements of processes.
Based on experience, the presenter developed the RAM Capability Matrix providing improvement projects maturity indicators of individual disciplines through an easy way to assess these disciplines. The approach can be used for any IT supporting disciplines like change, configuration, defect and test management. The new approach combines the following elements:

A Capability Matrix based on two dimensions with each three values:
- implementation aspects: human, process, technology
- decision levels: strategic, tactical, operational
A Requirements Assessment Model defining for each cell in the matrix objectives to achieve and the specific requirements to comply with. These objectives and requirements are based on best practices and can be tailored to specific needs within a defined scope of the discipline.
A Maturity Calculation Method rating the requirements according to ISO15504/SPICE standard and calculating a maturity level based on the level of achievement of the requirements. Maturity levels can be used independently or in combination with current models like SPICE and CMMi.

Because the RAM Capability Matrix summarizes the discipline capability levels and its requirements to a simple 3 x 3 matrix, it can easily be used by everybody in the organisation as communication tool to detect discipline deficiencies, to show actual status, and to measure improvements. After decades of technology and process driven approaches, the RAM Capability Matrix now combines the key success factors of disciplines including the human aspects into an agile and versatile approach.
The presentation explains the RAM Capability Matrix and show how it is used in practice to define the maturity of the configuration management discipline.

Link to RAM Capability Matrix slides.

Ways of working in a CM team (Christian Pendleton):
It is quite common that a team of CM-experts works in a rather complex situation where they continously have to prioritize between emergency operational support, short term solutions and long term work with process and tool issues. It is also common that the team has a quite large number of stake holders that tries to control the prioritization of the tasks in the team.
I would like to share and discuss experiences and theories about using Kanban as a framework for prioritization and planning of the work in such a team.

A Day in the Life of a CM Person (Michael Steen Pedersen):
Does the CM person exist or is it just a role or a set of responsibilities? Is CM technical or has it become mainly administrative? Is there a clear scope of the CM tasks or is it tying together all the loose ends in general? Are the daily challenges worth mentioning compared to the difficulties convincing the management about the benefits of CM in the long run? Does anyone ever truly gain from our efforts?

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