1

I have spent my career on the software development side of things and in the latter part have become more and more involved in the realm of Software Configuration Management. Now I am moving into an IT group and need to ramp up on CM practices from that standpoint.

Are there any good references (books, websites, blogs whatever) out there comparing Software CM practices to IT CM practices?

Basically I'm in learning mode and am trying compare things I already know from the software development side to things on the IT side.

HopelessN00b
  • 53,385
  • 32
  • 133
  • 208
dkackman
  • 113
  • 4

1 Answers1

1

You may have a difficult time finding a book comparing these practices directly. I am not aware of any.

The software development life cycle and IT are often directly intertwined. IT is often responsible for the production environments, which enables proper separation of duties. As such, you should already have some existing external perspective although probably limited.

Typically, change control or change management between development and IT are nearly identical, at least when the changes are applied to the system. The differences are in the details, as an Apache upgrade is not going to be deployed the same way as a proprietary application. Nevertheless, all changes deployed to production should follow the same fundamental requirements.

Typically, I think of change control as the documentation and audit trail for the following key points in a plan format:

  • Summary
  • Scheduling
  • Testing
  • Verification
  • Backout
  • Change details

If you want to review IT fundamentals best practices in detail, you may find the Practice of Systems and Network Administration to be a good reference. If you want to read further about change control, you will likely find ITIL to be a useful reference.

I would be happy to go into further detail if there are particular areas that you are unclear about.

Warner
  • 23,440
  • 2
  • 57
  • 69
  • Thanks. Yeha I kinda figured it was a long shot finding something as specific as I'm looking for. Thanks for the references though I will take a look. I am already seeing much about ITIL. is that pretty standard in the US? – dkackman Apr 05 '10 at 21:35
  • Yes and no. I've observed ITIL to be more commonly used extensively in large corporations. However, a lot of the principles and practices seem to be part of many IT departments naturally. – Warner Apr 05 '10 at 21:42