Change Management in an Agile Environment

Configuration management is defined as an engineering discipline that deals with procedures as well as methods imperative to recognize and regulate items. This makes sure about integrity as well as quality of the commodity under expansion. The four major principles that CM deals with include audit, report and control (Schonwalder, Bjorklund & Shafer, 2010). The major role that is played by CM is enabling development groups to recognize the costs that create an application. In order to meet the pace of agile development it is imperative to tailor the CM.

According to Highsmith (2009), it is imperative to make sure that implementing CM will be adjusted to the agile principles. This requires to remain intact without harming any of the CM aspects. It requires to be kept in mind that recognizing, scheming, inspecting and reporting are CM values that are atheist to the development methodology applied. However, CM could be applied in diverse ways given thatthe CM principles remain intact. Most of the case, CM finds itself in a company that deals with hybrid possessing some parallel phases rather than an organization that is agile. As a result, with introduction to agile, the implementation of CM requires to be accustomed to fit the requirement of agile growth methodology.

According to Cobb (2011), management of competent software configuration illustrates a real life example that states software configuration is decisive for creating successful agile projects. It is imperative to comprehend about agile SCM by identifying the aspects that will lead towards a successful agile environment without breaking agility. SCM procedures require to embody the agile principles in order to accomplish the aspects of agile development. It is imperative for companies keep up with rapid change in mechanisms due to increased speed of agile procedures (Ambler & Lines, 2012).

According to Moreira (2010), the major aspect of an agile environment is to think small in terms of increments as well as iterations at work. As a result, CM requires to have support the aptitude to deal with smaller increase of work along with rise in the change rate. CM for agile is not negligible CM, however CM that can deal with quick recognition and have power over maintaining the elevated rapidity of change. While simultaneously, it will also diminish the effort in organizing the change. It is decisive for CM to remain ready to deal with smaller work chunks as an agile environment mostly involves product management. This in turn indicates that there are additional incremental deliveries that are both external and internal. This is accompanied with the implication of higher requirement for adjustments as well as automation in branching.

As opined by Whyte, Stasis andLindkvist (2016), individuals belonging to CM requires to work in collaboration to accomplish a shared goal. This goal will help to meet business of a project successfully. CM is also measured as a shared responsibility that is a part of daily activities carried out by team associates.

Workspaces and Merging

The company that involves an agile environment requires to have their individual workspace. However in case of pair programming,the requirement for shared workspaces increases. This makes it easier for two individuals to share the workspace along with the changes. They will be able to work jointly however at times they require to work separately. The agile project decides about the number of branches that will be required and the way by which it will integrate withother projects. According to Aielloand Sachs (2010), if the agile project is not large as well as independent of other projects, it becomes decisive to have a private workspace however not off the mainline.On the other hand with larger team the requirement to deal with a different layer of integration between mainline and personal workspace are highly required.

However, in order to reduce integration effort, an individual requires to attempt to keep a small team.The probable requirement for automated merging also takes place with the increased pace of agile. At present, most of the CM tools come with this feature however; it without this it requires an up gradation.This turns out to be more of a requirementwhen the agile project is large or when more individuals requires to touch the similar code units. If an organization proposes to deploy an agile environment in a big way, it is required to involve a CM co-op environment. This willmake it quick to bring agile projects online along with immediate use of CM. In a more traditional methodology, it is required to have an agile environment until the growthstage to get the CM environment up and running.

The Cm environment requires to be ready right with an agile methodology (Mohan, Ramesh &Sugumaran, 2010). This requires to be ready immediately after iteration proposal that takes place much before the development phase in regards to a more traditional method. This point, it becomes decisive to regard a CM co-op service model. This will help to bring projects rapidly into using CM environment. This will in turn prove to be beneficial for a company that has been trying to bring multiple online agile projects within a particular time. The CM co-op gets rid of the requirement for setting up the CM tools as well as introducing the infrastructurealong with establishing the procedures.

Research Methodology

The research method is very important in case of all research works. In this particular research the importance and the role played by configuration management in an agile environment is analysed, evaluated and conclusions have been drawn based on complete secondary research. There are many secondary sources available for research purposes. The most effective and reliable sources need to be identified and further applied for the research work. The articles, journals and research papers which had been written before and have used reliable and authentic data must be consulted for the research. In many papers it has been researched and seen that there are many metrics of configuration management which can be applied in agile environment and can be very effective as well. The research is mainly concentrated on the success of the application of the configuration management in an agile environment. The CM is playing a very important role here as the short releases are supported by it as stated by Alba, et.al, (2014).

The CM is also supporting the workspaces, the merging and their branching, the building process which is continuous. Automation to metrics and roles of CM all are supportive towards the application of CM in an agile environment and also gets certain benefits from it. Boehm&Turner, (2005) states that there are many challenges which are faced by the management when they apply the configuration management to their processes. The organizations which have a traditional development process face more problems regarding this application of CM. The agile development of the software in the traditional settings leads to the contradictions and the conflicts. The managers of these traditional development organizations and the developers give their views and their issues regarding the problem which they face while practicing CM in agile environment.

There are two types of views regarding the application of the CM in such agile environment. As stated by Sellers, et.al, (2014) some are of the opinion that in case of the standalone and small projects the application of configuration management leads to less problems and the burden of its application is lesser. The CM is more synced and tuned in the small projects with the requirements of the software development organization and the industry at a large (Lindkvist, Stasis & Whyte, 2013). The development is taking place rapidly and to maintain the pace the CM is applied in such settings. There are many changes taking place with which the CM is able to adjust and cope up very fast. The needs of the software industry is also very high which is again managed by the CM.

However there are many other developers and managers who are of the opinion that the approach of configuration management in the agile situation leads to many problems. According to Fuggettaand Di Nitto, (2014)the hindrances of application of CM arise in case of scale and also in scope for larger organizations. There are many issues which need prompt resolution. There are several conflicts in development process, issues regarding business process and also conflicts or clashes with people. In larger organizations the problem is faced regarding the application of CM as they create a burden on the developers and managers.

In this research it has been found that the CM plays a vital role in the comparing between the major requirements and the final deliverables (Koppenjan,Veeneman, Van der Voort, Ten Heuvelhof&Leijten, 2011). The inventory and the requirements of the projects are compared by CM. There are many extra characteristics which are made a part of the projects but are not always identified. The application of CM under such circumstances is very effective. The additional features or the alterations to the value chain are investigated and found by the CM (Abrahamsson, Salo, Ronkainen&Warsta, 2017).

The building is done continuously but there are times when there are defects in the process. In such cases the buildings are broken and the recovery needs some time. This time that has been taken in the recovery of the builds that are also into consideration in case of the configuration management. There are many builds which occur continuously and the track of the exact number of builds is taken care of by the CM. At times extra processing is done in case of building which is kept a track of byconfiguration management. The migration path and the processing is monitored and identified by CM (Whyte, Stasis &Lindkvist, 2016). The downstream process is also facilitated by the CM application in the agile environments.

The success of any methodology of software development is dependent or at least to quite an extent impacted by configuration management. The principles of the configuration management as applied under an agile environment make it certain that the product which is under the process of development will be integrated. The configuration management may find other ways of implementation under such an environment. However, in all situations the principles of CM remain the same. In case of a traditional environment the application of CM is different while in an agile environment it is being adjusted so that developmental pace is maintained. The value stream is integrated by the apt application of the CM under the agile environment. Thus it can be said that the CM application in agile environment is effective in the smaller projects while in larger projects they need more adjustments.

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