Product Description

This book is a result of the European Experience Exchange (EUREX) project sponsored by the European Systems and Software Initiative for Software Best Practice in Europe. The EUREX project analyzed the industrial and economic impact and the similarities and differences between and among more than 300 Software Process Improvement Experiments sponsored by the EU.
The current volume offers a variety of perspectives on software configuration/change management and requirements engineering. These areas have a significant impact on the success of a software product and present a high potential for improvement as many organisations, especially small and medium-sized enterprises, have no purposeful process addressing these issues. As a result, this book is particularly meaningful for software practitioners in such enterprises, including both developers and line managers.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1389261 in Books
• Published on: 2001-11-28
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 280 pages

Book Info
Presents a high potential for improvement as many organizations, especially small and medium sized enterprises, have no purposeful process addressing these issues. Offers a variety of perspectives on software configuration and change management and requirements engineering. Softcover.

Customer Reviews

For advanced practitioners only - not a 'how to' book
This book is for advanced practitioners seeking ideas and best practices. It is not a 'how to' book, or even an overview of SCM and CM, but a collection of findings from the European Experience Exchange (EUREX) project.

The book is divided into three parts:
PART I covers how the topic relates to software process improvement,the European Systems and Software Initiative, and EUREX. Subjects covered include types of projects, stand alone assessments, and process improvement experiments (PIEs). These are aligned to EUXEX-specific approaches, which are the foundation of the book, and include: EUREX taxonomy, analysis and assessment of PIEs, and classification into problem domains.

PART II, "Managing the Change: Configuration Management, Change Management", is the heart of the book. The main areas addressed include: domain overview, risks and benefits, process input-output-activities, process management, SCM plan, impact of configuration management, role of control boards in configuration management, resources for practitioners, and methods and tools. Most of this material is handled in less than a page per sub topic. The remainder of this part of the book goes deeper into details regarding the connection of SCM and CM to quality, which are directly related to various process improvement experiments.

Part III is a collection of the Process Improvement Experiments in the form of report summaries. These are short and comprise over a third of the book.

For those new to SCM and CM I recommend "Software Configuration Management" by Jessica Keyes (ISBN 0849319765) instead of this book because Keyes' book explains the nuts and bolts, and shows how to implement and manage SCM/CM. However, if your area of expertise is SCM (or CM) and you want to tap into the lessons learned and findings that are contained in this book, you're sure to find more than one topic that you can apply or incorporate into your methodology.

Disjoint collection
This book is awful. It doesn't discuss the issues of Configuration management, it isn't a how-to book. It is a collection of disjoint material and results that would appeal to no one, or at least I have no idea who the target audience is. I bought this online and would not have purchased it at all if I had flipped through the pages in a bookstore first.