Software Configuration Management

The software industry is known to have commenced sometime in the mid-70s in the boom of the personal computer development. It started in the United States, and most of the biggest and the maximum number of software companies are located there. Even in the recent record of 2006, Microsoft has ruled over the entire software business across the world. The 2005 statistics clearly declared Silicon Valley to be the highest revenue earning software hub. The magazine also revealed the huge amount of 500 software companies dwelling in the fertile region.

Software development entails the entire process of software engineering combined with both the research and goals of software marketing that result into the development of software to enable an easier task. To be more precise, software development is defined as the translation of a user need into software product. You can call software development a sure success only if you realize both the processes and help in the collaboration of both engineering and marketing in the proper channel in the contribution of quality software development process.

The only thing constant in life perhaps is change. The Information Technology industry, the backbone of today’s business world, is no exception either. New technological innovations, data capturing techniques, system analysis, coding practices, and software enhancements are governed by change - constant, palpable, and at times subtle. In this article, we will explore the nature of software change management and the attributes of a change management system.

The term “Change Control” is one of the latest buzzwords in the IT industry. However, the term need not be restricted to the IT industry alone. The world has always been susceptible to change; however, the need for managing changes smoothly is felt the most nowadays across industries, especially the IT industry. This article will discuss about change control and its impact.

Change control relates to the procedures that are needed to introduce changes in IT products and services in a controlled manner. Addressing ad hoc changes needs to be coordinated well. Change control is a major component of a much broader subject – Change Management.

In the current Information Technology era, testing of software products and services assumes paramount importance. In essence, software testing is a process of running a software program in order to find errors at the time of execution. The main purpose of software testing is to check its usability and compliance to predefined standards. The crucial process of software testing ensures quality of the software product / application. This rigorous process also ensures safety, security, user-friendliness and robustness of the software. By robustness, we mean, how well the software can handle unwarranted events (a user keying in wrong data, or a snag in the operating system).