I have been working as a software consultant for more than 11 years. Because of that I am an eager supporter of lean principles and agile methods.
Unfortunately I missed the Agile Configuration Management meeting the other day. I got some material anyway that I read through. It was draft documents, so I was not allowed to spread them. However I made some reflections that I would like to share.
Since there is no explicit Configuration Management (CM) role in an agile project someone could easily make the mistake believing that CM is not taken seriously in agile methods. CM is all about managing changes in a controlled way, and agile methods embrace change.. right? So it should be quite natural to have CM in agile projects then? It is, but it’s not done in the same way as in more traditional projects.
CM in agile projects is about collective code ownership, continuous integration, frequent releases, refactoring and must be distributed among the developers. High demands are put on the team because of the short iterations, frequent releases and close collaboration with the customers. Appropriately applied it will improve the pace of change and is actually necessary for success.
CM is seldom mentioned when talking about agile methods. Instead we expect teams to rely a lot on tacit knowledge. What needs to be done however is to put CM on the agile agenda and make CM activities in agile methods more explicit.
More info:
Another whitepaper from LUCAS about SCM practices in XP teams
LUCAS homepage