Configuration Management and Version Control

Within this report I will discuss why software configuration management is important. I will introduce four principals of configuration management; configuration management planning, change management, version & release management and system building. I will also cover standards within configuration management and version identification.

Lehman’s first ‘law’ draws attention to a basic property of software systems, which is they evolve or die. One reason there is software change is new requirements, improvements are thought up and old ones become obsolete, evolving technology may cause this. Lehman’s second ‘law’ points to a fundamentally important precept that, when there is software change work has to be done to preserve quality of structure, let alone improve it if need be.

Configuration management
Configuration management is the development and application of standards and procedures for managing an evolving systems product. As discussed above there is many rea...