- yet the appropriate balance needs to be defined according to the needs of the organization.
- Cross tool/vendor integration - what information is stored where, and how is it linked? The pros and cons of integrated suites vs. best of breed solutions.
Metrics
On the subject of metrics for agile projects, Alistair Cockburn describes some useful reporting metrics in his article A governance model for agile projects .
The IT Process Institute has an interesting report (Executive Summary available for free download): ITPI Executive Snapshot - Change Configuration and Release What's really driving top performance?
This is a summary of the 60-page ITPI Change, Configuration, and Release Performance Study that provides extensive analysis and detail about specific change, configuration, and release practices that best predict top levels of performance across the 341 IT organizations studied.
While it has an ITIL/Service Management focus, it makes interesting reading:
Conclusion
Governance is about good management. Agile can provide it!
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About the author
Brad Appleton is a software CM/ALM solution architect and lean/agile development champion at a large telecommunications company. Currently he helps projects and teams adopt and apply lean/agile development and CM/ALM practices and tools. He is coauthor of the bookSoftware Configuration Management Patterns, a columnist in The CM Journal and The Agile Journal at CMCrossroads.com, and a former section editor for The C++ Report. You can read Brad's blog at blog.bradapp.net.
About the author
Steve Berczuk is an engineer and ScrumMaster at Humedica where he's helping to build next-generation SaaS-based clinical informatics applications. The author of Software Configuration Management Patterns: Effective Teamwork, Practical Integration, he is a recognized expert in software configuration management and agile software development. Steve is passionate about helping teams work effectively to produce quality software. He has an M.S. in operations research from Stanford University and an S.B. in Electrical Engineering from MIT, and is a certified, practicing ScrumMaster. Contact Steve at steve@berczuk.com or visit berczuk.com and follow his blog at blog.berczuk.com.
About the author
Robert Cowham has long been interested in software configuration management while retaining the attitude of a generalist with experience and skills in many aspects of software development. A regular presenter at conferences, he authored the Agile SCM column within the CM Journal together with Brad Appleton and Steve Berczuk. His day job is as Services Director for Square Mile Systems whose main focus is on skills and techniques for infrastructure configuration management and DCIM (Data Center Infrastructure Management) - applying configuration management principles to hardware documentation and implementation as well as mapping ITIL services to the underlying layers.
