8 Part 8: Annex

8.2 Tool References

8.2.2 CM Tool

Usage

Managing Product Library, Managing Product Configuration, Preparing Software Implementation, Integration and Evaluation Concept, Preparing System Implementation, Integration and Evaluation Concept

Purpose

In the daily routine of a project, transparency and traceability are crucial requirements. For this purpose »CM Tools are used. This means that, during the whole lifetime of the software product, it is must be possible to permanently keep track of and to control its structure and components. In the simplest case, a file system is used for this purpose. More practical, however, is the use of special tools that support orderly filing. It must be possible to identify connections and differences between earlier configurations and the current configuration at any time with the help of the CM tool. Furthermore, it has to be ensured with the help of the CM tool that it is always possible to access both the current version and previous versions. There are some open source CM management tools, but the majority of these tools is proprietary.

Typical characteristics of CM systems are:

• Version tracking,
• Variant tracking,
• Build management,
• Change management and dependency tracking,
• Bug tracking,
• Documentation tracking, distribution tracking etc.