What Does a Software Configuration Manager Do?

Configuration management tools are tools that support the tasks of identifying configuration items, version control, change control, auditing, and status statistics.

Software Configuration Management Tool

(1) Configuration support. A configuration is a group of intermediate software products with a common purpose, each of which is called a configuration item. Software configuration management supports users to establish various relationships between configuration items and maintain these relationships. Maintaining these relationships helps to complete certain specific tasks (such as Build) and identify the impact of a change on the overall system development. ^[1]

Currently configuration management tools can be divided into 3 levels: ^[2]

The scale and complexity of application software are becoming larger and more complex, which has led to a gradual change in the way software is developed from an early single combat or manual workshop style to a group-based, factory-lined, team-based development approach. There are some problems encountered in this development model, such as:

Care must be taken when using software configuration management tools: ^[3]

The evaluation of tools should focus on the applicability of functions, rather than the comprehensiveness of functions; product evaluation should understand the following issues: ^[1]

Which function of this product can solve the current problems of the target organization and meet the organization's needs in software configuration management;

What is the operating efficiency of the product under the peak load of the target institution;

What is the product's support for concurrent use?

How compatible is the product with existing systems, tools, processes, and environments;

How mature and stable is the product (choosing a mature product is an important means to reduce software development costs and improve software reliability), you should choose a tool with high market share as much as possible;

Whether the product is easy to learn and use;

Whether the product purchase, installation, implementation and maintenance costs are acceptable.