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SCM Configuration Branching Ownership
Posted by Randall Becker, Nexbridge Inc., 02-Jan-2000The Configuration Management (CM) group should be responsible for the maintenance, standards, procedures, and policies surrounding the configuration/revision/library/repository management systems (pick your favorite one here) and the metrics, measurements, and reporting associated with those. It may even get involved in, as part of executing the procedures for some tools, defining valid branches available to developers. Development should be responsible for checking code out/in of the repository, and any build issues. The biggest differentiation I've seen between small and large organizations in this regard is that library management can become a separate department in large companies, where it is rarely effective in small ones. Typically, having a CM administrator check-in the code, based on an e-mail from a developer is more time consuming, and does not add anything of substance, to the process of managing software. We who actually discuss CM issues are not the norm in the industry. Most often, I have seen CM people being hired with the intent of being purely clerical, with little or no computing experience or technical requirements. This is rather scary, in my opinion, but often true. Configuration Management is a Product Management function. It is the effective and timely delivery of changed elements changes to users via consistent packaging media - in a nut shell anyway. When Development does product management itself, CM should be done under the Development umbrella. When there is a separate group doing PM, that group should be responsible for it.
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