Books Guide: Configuration Management of Software Intensive Systems

Configuration management (CM) is a field of management that focuses on establishing and maintaining consistency of a system or product's performance and its functional and physical attributes with its requirements, design, and operational information throughout its life.

DevOps is an emerging set of principles, methods and practices for communication, collaboration and integration between software development (application/software engineering) and IT operations (systems administration/infrastructure) professionals. It has developed in response to the emerging understanding of the interdependence and importance of both the development and operations disciplines in meeting an organization's goal of rapidly producing software products and services.

Inadequate build systems can dramatically impact developer productivity. Bad dependencies, false compile errors, failed software images, slow compilation, and time-wasting manual processes are just some of the byproducts of a subpar build system. In Software Build Systems, software productivity expert Peter Smith shows you how to implement build systems that overcome all these problems, so you can deliver reliable software more rapidly, at lower cost.

Continuous Delivery shows how to create fully automated, repeatable, and reliable processes for rapidly moving changes through build, deploy, test, and release. Using these techniques, software organizations are getting critical fixes and other new releases into production in hours—sometimes even minutes—even in large projects with complex code bases.

Behaviour Driven Development is about writing software that matters. It is an approach to agile software development that takes cues from Test Driven Development, Domain Driven Design, and Acceptance Test Driven Planning.

The multicore revolution has reached the deployment stage in embedded systems ranging from small ultramobile devices to large telecommunication servers. The transition from single to multicore processors, motivated by the need to increase performance while conserving power, has placed great responsibility on the shoulders of software engineers. In this new embedded multicore era, the toughest task is the development of code to support more sophisticated systems.

In most software organizations, the budget for software maintenance is much larger than for software development. However, there is much less management attention focus on software maintenance than on software development. This book illustrates how process improvement models popular with software development can be applied to software maintainers.

Testing even a simple system can quickly turn into a potentially infinite task. Faced with tight costs and schedules, testers need to have a toolkit of practical techniques combined with hands-on experience and the right strategies in order to complete a successful project. World-renowned testing expert Rex Black provides you with the proven methods and concepts that test professionals must know.

Based on CMM/CMMI, this unique new resource offers you practical "how to" guidance on software process improvement. The book provides you with clear implementation steps that are designed to have a highly positive impact on even your most challenging projects. You get valuable, time-saving templates that can be quickly tailored for your purposes and used immediately.

From its first appearance in 1995, this book has been consistently well received by tutors and students alike. Now in its fourth edition, this textbook is highly regarded for providing a complete introduction to Software Project Management for both undergraduate and postgraduate students.

"The Art of Project Management" covers it all--from practical methods for making sure work gets done right and on time, to the mindset that can make you a great leader motivating your team to do their best. Reading this was like reading the blueprint for how the best projects are managed at Microsoft... I wish we always put these lessons into action!" --Joe Belfiore, General Manager, E-home Division, Microsoft Corporation

(From the back cover) Since the earliest days of the computer industry, managing a software project has been a complex and demanding activity. While the technical content of software products and the technical methods used to build them have changed over time, the fundamental issues that determine the success or failure of software projects have remained fairly constant.

Software Configuration Management Patterns alleviates software engineers' most common concerns about software configuration management (SCM)--perceived rigidity and an overemphasis on process. This book demonstrates how effective SCM strategies promote a healthy, team-oriented culture that produces better software. Through the use of patterns, the authors show that properly managed workflow can avert delays, morale problems, and cost overruns. The patterns approach illustrates how SCM can be easily and successfully applied in small- to mid-sized organizations. By learning how these patterns relate to each other, readers can avoid common mistakes that too often result in frustrated developers and reduced productivity. Key coverage includes instruction on how to: develop the next version of a product while fixing problems with the current one; develop code in parallel with others and join up with the current state of code line; identify what versions of code went into a particular component; analyze where a change happened in the history of a component's development; use current tools more effectively, and decide when to use a manual process; introduce good practices into individual workspaces and throughout the organization; identify crucial aspects of the software process, so that team projects can run smoothly; build and foster a development environment focused on producing optimal teamwork and quality products.

We often hear about software projects that are late, over budget, or unable to satisfy customer needs. Yet some organizations are able to manage project after project successfully with desired results. In this book, Pankaj Jalote looks at one such organization, Infosys Technologies, a highly regarded high maturity organization, and details the processes it has in place to manage projects.

Take control of the software development process with this new book, a comprehensive explanation of Software Configuration Management (SCM). It provides everything you need to know -- from the basic definition of SCM as a scientific tool that brings control to the development process, to the procedures for SCM implementation in your organization. You review each phase in the software development lifecycle, and learn how SCM can help you avoid pitfalls at every step.

Software Configuration Management (SCM) is an essential software engineering discipline used to manage change in today's complex, fast-paced software development environment. SCM is used during all lifecycle phases and provides a structure for identifying and controlling changes to documentation, requirements, models, code, and Web artifacts such as HTML and XML files.

Learn from the mistakes of others documented here in this hard-hitting, humorous, and career-enhancing book from the authors of the best-selling AntiPatterns. Rise above the industry-wide malaise of mass denial and realize that you too can, and definitely must, master Software Configuration Management (SCM) for successful software engineering. In this much-needed book, the authors provide 16 new AntiPatterns covering the most common SCM mistakes and pitfalls.

In this book, a leading Sun Microsystems consultant presents start-to-finish techniques for software development, covering all three key elements of success: people, processes, and technology. Learn how to build a winning software development team, organize that team for success, and retain your best talent in today's extraordinarily competitive hiring environment. Learn how to use OO techniques from planning through testing.

This landmark book provides a thorough overview of the Unified Process for software development, with a practical focus on modeling using the Unified Modeling Language (UML). The Unified Process goes beyond mere object-oriented analysis and design to spell out a proven family of techniques that supports the complete software development life cycle. The result is a component-based process that is use-case driven, architecture-centric, iterative, and incremental.

Web Performance Tuning hits the ground running and gives concrete advice for improving crippled Web performance right away. For anyone who has waited too long for a Web page to display or watched servers slow to a crawl, this book includes tips on tuning the server software, operating system, network, and the Web browser itself.

With this book, individual developers and small development teams can gain the benefits of configuration management that were previously restricted to large organizations with large budgets. This pragmatic, easy-to-read guide to configuration management comes with all the freeware PC developers need to get started.

This is a short book intended to present elements of software quality systems. Correctly called a primer, it depicts and discusses multiple areas that need to be understood by Information Technology specialists and managers. The appendices, most of them IEEE Standards, point out the usefulness of IEEE work and documents in the standards and quality-assurance areas.

From the Publisher

This book provides a description and technical overview of the CMM, along with guidelines for improving software process management in general. It is a sequel to Watts Humphrey's work Managing the Software Process in that it structures the maturity framework presented in that book more formally.

Software configuration management is the most effective management and communication tool in existence for understanding and following processes which occur during the evolution of a product or system. The book is a guidebook for the software practitioner and is intended to serve the software developer as a tool for accomplishing a specific task. The book discusses the four main task or identification, change control, configuration, auditing and reporting.

Software Configuration Management provides step-by-step guidance for identifying the items of a software system that are subject to change during the system life cycle. It defines procedures for the systematic evaluation, coordination, approval or disapproval, and implementation of all changes to the software configuration.

"make" is one of UNIX's greatest contributions to software development, and this book is the clearest description of "make" ever written. Even the smallest software project typically involves a number of files that depend upon each other in various ways. If you modify one or more source files, you must relink the program after recompiling some, but not necessarily all, of the sources.

Organized as a collection of essays about programming, this is another Weinberg classic. If you are a programmer, or manage programmers, or indeed just associate with programmers, this is a book for you.