Review of Adapting Configuration Management for Agile Teams: Balancing Sustainability and Speed

Adapting Configuration Management for Agile Teams: Balancing Sustainability and Speed is a book that bridges the gap between tradition SCM and Release Engineering and Agile teams. Mario asked me to be a reviewer of the draft manuscript and I knew that Mario had great experience in establishing SCM processes in larger organizations, and that he was also a strong advocate of Agile methods. I was pleased to discover a book that, while being able to help those from a traditional release management background adapt their processes to support agile, also addresses the needs of those transitioning to agile who can benefit from using appropriate SCM processes to help them.

This book will help you to understand how SCM can be an enabler for agile, and will also help you to understand how to fulfill the SCM definition of Identification, Control, Status Accounting, and Audit and Review while still being agile.

This is what I said about the book on my books page:

This book is a good guide to both CM and Agile principles, and it demonstrates how to use software configuration management to enable your team to be more agile. This book can guilde you to understanding how to manage releases in an agile environment, and how to apply basic CM concepts like build and branching successfully. While not a replacement for a book on your agile method, this book is a primer on agile for those with a traditional release management background, and and a primer on CM for those who understand agile. After reading it you will have enough background to be productive, and a good sense of what you need to learn more about. In addition, this book covers topics such as how to leverage cloud service providers for infrastructure, how to leverage SCM to make off-shore development less painful, and how to evolve your SCM process in an agile (incremental) fashion. With a good structure that allows you to navigate the book quickly, and a good use of metaphor to describe concepts, this book will help a release managers, project managers, developers and architects use the SCM process to get the most out of their agile teams.

If you are transitioning to agile and want to know how your release management team can help, rather than hinder you, give this book a look.