Configuration Management The Missing link inf Web Engineering

by Susan Dart

An examination of configuration management (CM) from a business value perspective. It discusses why a company's e-business and e-commerce - encompassing Web content, Web applications, back-office... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1580530982
• ISBN13: 9781580530989
• Release Date: November 2000
• Publisher: Artech House Publishers
• Length: 300 Pages
• Weight: 1.39 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 6.1" x 9.2"

Customer Reviews

A must read for Web developers

In the preface of the book the author states that her main aim in writing the book is to articulate and raise awareness about the Web crisis and then provide a solution in the form of configuration management. The book delivers the goods and fulfills the promises. Configuration management has been around for many years and the author is one of the top experts in the field. The explosive growth of the Word Wide Web has changed the way software is developed for Internet and WWW. In the case of software development for the Web, the fundamental difference is the time-time to develop, time to change, time to modify and update, time to correct and so on. Configuration management, if not implemented correctly, can increase the response time of a company. But if the organizations ignore the CM principles and do a "quick job", then it can lead to greater disasters. So how to implement configuration management techniques properly to Web development and deployment has been a problem that has vexed project managers and development teams. This book does an excellent job in telling how to integrate configuration management into the web development efforts of the organization, so that the organization can survive and thrive in this highly competitive internet times by providing its customers, shareholders, employees and so on with up-to-the-minute and accurate information. The book provides an overview of web development and configuration management before getting down to the business of linking CM and web engineering. This overview provides a good starting point for people who are new to these fields. The chapters "CM tool selection and deployment" and "Cases studies in CM automation of web systems" are excellent and provide practical and surefire strategies and advise for the practitioners. The checklists, templates, questionnaires, etc. add value to the book as they can be readily put to use. This book is a must read for project managers and development teams who want to consistently succeed in their web development efforts.

Addresses challenges, raises awareness & gives case studies

Ms. Dart is a well known expert in configuration management and her a long list of published articles are highly technical in nature. However, this book is not one of her "how to" approaches. Instead, it provides a path towards best practices that are conspicuously missing in most web engineering and web site management endeavors. My own background will add some context to my review. I have developed and implemented policies, processes and procedures for both software configuration management (SCM) and change control for a number of companies. SCM is an application delivery discipline that is key to product integrity and assurance during development and maintenance. Change control is a service delivery discipline that ensures that changes released to the production environment are carefully controlled. In the past the two were the concern of two entirely different domains (development and production), and only companies that had highly mature processes linking problem management, enhancements/bug fixes, SCM and release and production change management bridged the two domains. The web changed that because cycle times compressed and are driven by business requirements, not technical considerations. The tried and true processes we employed for SCM and change control were barriers to meeting business requirements and something had to give. Unfortunately, what gave was due diligence, which is well illustrated in figures 1.1 through 1.3 in this book. These figures show typical best practice development/maintenance cycle and typical change request process employed in non-web based systems, and the "fix it-publish it-fix" it approach that is too common in web-centric systems. This book provides the middle ground by examining how to implement processes and procedures that provide assurance without the barriers of the traditional approach to processes. Ms. Dart begins this book with a broad description of web-centric computing and a list of nine major challenges faced by this paradigm. This is foundation material that is more suited to managers, but is also valuable for technical staff who need to see the big picture. She follows this with a description of what CM is. Nothing new here for those of us who have been practitioners, but this may be enlightening material for the bright, young wizards who are geniuses at coding and system integration, but have little-to-no idea about processes. The next chapter, 4, covers tools from a functionality viewpoint. The discussion of evolutionary and full-process tools will help define your tool requirements based on how you manage development and production. She also provides some excellent pointers on how to develop a benefit analysis and determine return on tool investment, which is something the bean counters will want to see considering how expensive most CM tools are. Chapter 5 gives sound advice on selecting and implementing a CM tool. This chapter is especially valuable because of the pointers