Presentation Abstracts
Please note that where available, papers/slides (Adobe PDF) have been linked below each abstract
title. Or see the Index of Papers.
Callum Kidd (keynote) - "Managing Configurations is not Configuration
Management"
Slides (32k)
Numerous studies continue to show that Configuration Management (CM)
still suffers from a major image problem in the modern organisation. Apart
from the widely held view that it is merely a clerical activity, not
managerial, and that it is synonymous with change management and version
control, we have recently encountered a more disturbing perception of the CM
process. As more and more companies become focussed on the lifecycle
management of their products, we appear to have become very blasé about
categorising processes into each of the lifecycle elements. This fails to
recognise the fact that many such processes have a full lifecycle role, and
their application may differ greatly within specific phases of that
lifecycle. Configuration management is such a process.
Ongoing research from the Centre for Project Management at UMIST in
Manchester, into the competencies required in the managing of both projects
and configurations demonstrates a growing need to better understand the role
of CM practice in terms of lifecycle management. It argues that too much
emphasis is placed on the development of process, and too little on the
understanding of practice. The balance must be re-addressed. Research shows
that we are at a critical juncture in meeting the demand for well qualified
and competent configuration managers. Only by defining an updated model of
practice can we hope to meet the evolving needs of modern business.
This presentation proposes a new focus for the role of CM to best meet
those challenges.
Philip Lagus and
Kajsa Häggkvist (keynote) - "Spreading
CM & RM knowledge and expertise in a global organisation"
Slides (1,016k)
How do you build competence around CM & Requirement Management (RM) in a
large organization? How do you establish a platform for tools/methods and
training in a high-tech organization? How do you communicate and spread good
practices in large organizations? How can you utilize competence and
experience to train others in the organization?
In 1994, the Configuration Management competence center (CMcc) was
started. The goal of the CMcc was to spread CM awareness at Ericsson.
Conferences were held and consulting and training in the CM area was
conducted. This was done by a small group of persons working mostly on long
term assignments. As the demand from Ericsson for CM consulting and CM
training area increased, it was obvious that the CMcc staff wouldn't be able
to meet the demand. There weren't enough resources. It was then that the CM
Academy (CMA) concept was born. The main idea was to build up a virtual
network of competent CM persons that work at Ericsson and non-Ericsson
companies around a core team of CMA staff. The concept was introduced at a
seminar in the spring of 2000.
The presentation provides lessons learned when deploying solutions and
good practices for CM & RM in a global organisation. Demonstrations of the
CM Framework and RM Framework that are available via the Ericsson intranet
will be held.
Luc Lobel (keynote) - "CM infrastructure - improving ROI for modern
business"
Slides (184k)
Estimated return on IT infrastructure investments is becoming an
increasingly important factor in the investment decision making process. SCM
infrastructure is no exception. The time horizon within which an investment
needs to produce positive returns (prove its "worthiness") is ever
decreasing. This presentation will detail various ways of supporting the
argument for high returns on CM investments, including a novel CM spiral
model for the build-operate-transfer implementation process. TesCom's CM
implementation methodology comprises different calculation algorithms
developed to support this quantitative approach.
Richard Brooksby - "Requirements and
configuration management"
Paper
The more direct the connection between customer requirements and the
changes made by software engineers the more likely that those changes will
improve the product and increase its value for the customers, and therefore
the organization. I describe a simple model of requirements engineering and
a method of managing change to software which focusses directly on those
requirements.
Martin Waldron - "The Content Management Challenge"
Paper (20k)
Despite the success of content management initiatives adopted in part by
operational area or function application such as Web Publishing , Document
Management many organisations have still tended to regard it as a back
office activity or a local departmental support tool - not as something that
has a key contribution to the corporate business strategy.
Organisations have to widen their brief for content management and
address what is being referred to as Enterprise Content Management (ECM).
AIIM describes ECM as 'the creation, capture, delivery, customisation and
management of content across an enterprise'. Gartner broadens this
definition to include archive.
ECM represents the glue between the 'front office' - whether that is a
WAP phone, a web browser, a call centre or a point of sale kiosk - and the
'back office', the people and applications that will turn that initial query
into a promise fulfilment. Put another way, there's a flood of information
hurtling towards you and ECM is a way of channelling it. Nor is it all
coming at you - some is coming from you. You produce content internally that
needs to be reviewed, approved, collated, circulated, recycled, stored and
ultimately disposed of. You generate bills, statements and other customer
information that you need to retain - perhaps in the same format as you
published it, which could be on paper, as an email, a PDF document or as a
text message to a mobile phone.
Also the other dimension is the corporate memory that classifies and adds
context to the documents and addresses the issues of corporate governance.
Companies currently taking their first steps into electronic services
delivery and developing EDMS and Workflow systems may find ECM a challenging
and daunting prospect. This was the reaction of organisations as they moved
from DIP to EDMS in the nineties. The message has to be as your develop your
information strategy make sure you that you retain a wide vision that
enables you to embrace key elements of ECM in your planning.
Mayank Ladd - "Content Management
Software: What functionality should I expect?"
Paper (43k)
The aim of content management technology should be to reduce the costs
involved in handling content within business processes, to improve the
processes themselves by enabling quicker throughput and greater visibility,
and to facilitate the creation of value from information within the
business.
In order for businesses to realise the value of their information we are
now seeing a convergence, not only of Document Management (DM) and Content
Management (CM), but also of other information-centric technologies such as
Software Configuration Management (SCM). This convergence reflects the
overlap that exists between these areas, and the need to take a coherent
approach to the management of information within the organisation.
These technologies offer a host of functionality and it is important to
define what your business requirements are in order to get the most out of
CM software.
John Metcalfe - "Getting started with Configuration Management"
Slides (1,067k)
This presentation is an introduction to Configuration Management and will
address:
- the four basic functions of CM
- the impact of CM on Project control
- the impact of CM on Product Development
- the steps for implementing CM disciplines into an organisation
- the benefits of CM to an organisation
Linda Newsome Ray and Tom Brett - "Managing configurations in large complex projects"
Slides (150k)
Managing configurations in large complex projects is critical within
today's financial services industry. Strict regulations demand tightly
controlled processes; and the breadth of platforms and number of players
involved in such an environment, create an overwhelming amount of
complexity. This demands industrial-strength configuration management.
The key to managing large, complex projects is to start with a
process-based solution. Throughout this presentation, we highlight how a
process-based solution enables a project manager to easily manage a complex
configuration management environment.
Some of the scenarios to be discussed include:
- practical examples of multi-platform change management
- departmental and geographical collaboration
- establishing and defining a workflow process that provides visibility
and control over multiple change packages
The presentation describes real-life examples from a major financial
institution, where a large majority of the entire software base is
controlled using these methods.
John Parker - "Selecting the right tools"
Slides (834k)
This session will offer guidance on how to approach the selection of the
most appropriate CM tools for your requirements. After briefly looking at
what "CM" can cover, we will look at how to approach the selection
process and how to make sure that you know what is is you want to achieve
and how to make sure that the vendors listen to you. Some suggestions for
tool selection criteria will be discussed together with some methods for
tool evaluation. finally, some thoughts on the value of CM to your
organisation, and how you can justify the necessary budget required to
complete a successful implementation.
Slides (132k)
David will be co presenting with a Cap Gemini Ernst & Young
consultant to bring you a lively and innovative case study on controlling
data centres.
Managing multiple IT environments for customers in a data centre demands
formal processes to suit mission critical services, as well as coping with
external project teams implementing major changes constantly. This case
study presented jointly by CGEY and Kenson covers how a constant need to
improve data centre infrastructure control processes resulted in the
delivery of a configuration management system. How the programme started,
the key decisions that were faced and the benefits to date will be covered.
Steve Ransom - "Change
Managing Databases"
Slides (78k)
Many organisations apply changes to databases manually by allowing a
database administrators access to chnage the database contents directly. Or
semi-automatically where scripts are provided to change the databases, but
these scripts are applied manually. In both these cases the change
implementation process is manual, therefore prone to human error, unaudited,
unapproved and unreversable. This presentation/demo looks at a large
financial organisations Oracle implementation, where 170 Oracle databases
are managed using a solution which is applicable to almost any database.
Jeff Bowles - "Great Expectations (of a build
engineer)"
Paper (38k) /
Slides (15k)
A handoff is the process of preparing work into a form usable by others,
which means that it's a Engineering task with formal underpinnings - much
more than a software automation role. This document describes the role of a
build/release engineer when the emphasis is placed on the ENGINEERING: with
what groups does he or she interact (and in what ways), what are the
requirements of a software handoff, etc. The key is to understand who will
receive your work product, and what they need to receive in order to proceed
efficiently.
Shirley Lacy and
Michael Kennedy - "Realising the benefits of Configuration
Management - results of the CMSG survey"
Paper (62k) /
Slides (63k)
Shirley and Michael will be presenting the results of the recent survey
showing awareness and usage of CM standards and best practices including
ITIL standards.
Rene Schaap (keynote) - "The Dark Side of Configuration Management"
Slides (660k)
Currently the inhabitants of CM-land are nationalistic and believe 100%
in their own culture and habits (i.e. CM solutions). The CM community is
complaining about their export of CM knowledge and expertise to the rest of
the world; it is not as good as they would like. One of the reasons is that
they quite often forget that other countries like Project Management,
Development and Financial have different opinions and therefore a different
culture and lifestyle.
This presentation is about the reasons why CM is not visible to others.
Do we speak the same language, do we have a common goal, and what is the
benefit for the others? A slightly different approach in our ‘selling
techniques’ could help CM people to increase their export.
Mark Cartwright (keynote) - "Agility with Ability - towards Operational
Excellence"
Slides (626k)
Mark’s presentation outlines what Microsoft means by Operational
Excellence and how it enables organisations to reduce cost of ownership
while increasing quality of service. It examines why organisations may find
themselves struggling and what strategies they can use to move towards
operational excellence. In particular it will consider the role that people
and process have to play alongside the technology – focusing on change and
configuration management. The presentation will use real examples and
customer experience of where apparent technology problems can be traced back
to the absence of good process and control as the root cause.
Laura Wingerd - "Container-based SCM & Inter-File Branching (from her
forthcoming book)"
Paper (50k)
In developing large, complex products, the single-product paradigm of
configuration management falls short. What if the 'product' consists of
hundreds of components? What if components are distributed in a dozen -- or
a hundred -- different configurations? To manage such complexity, the
'container-based' software configuration management approach can be useful.
Container-based CM is a bit like object oriented programming. It views any
end product as an assemblage of components, each of which evolves
independently of the other.
Dominic Tavassoli - "Implementing CM Everywhere - the practicalities"
Paper (567k) /
Slides (567k)
Let's be honest. Change and Configuration Management (CM) systems are a
pain - for companies to implement and developers to use. And what if those
developers are offshore? While CM systems can deliver increased
productivity, faster time-to-market and fewer errors, there is a price to
pay. Learning curves are steep and many additional administrative tasks are
required, like repeatedly checking files in and out. Which is exactly why
developers don't like these systems and why so many organizations that could
really use CM tools don't.
How can we make CM transparent to the user so no new routines or in-depth
training are required? How can organizations realize all the benefits of CM
whether they were developing locally or offshore without any of the
downside?
Rama Varsani - "An Enterprise Approach to Change & Configuration
Management"
Slides (1,962k)
Whether you are developing and maintaining in-house software systems or
providing commercial applications, without CCM, you will not be able to
survive the increasingly competitive demands of the marketplace. This
presentation examines the challenges faced by companies in developing a
truly enterprise approach to change and configuration management and
considers the key features to look for in a change management solution. A
case study approach is used to examine some of the options available, from
simple version control to managing risk through a more methodical and
collaborative approach.
Richard Brooksby
and
Peter Jackson - "Reform of an existing CM system for 500 developers"
Paper
It's relatively easy to examine a company's configuration management
needs and set up a system, but what if they already have a large and complex
system which isn't serving their needs, is causing their costs to
increase, and need to reform it without disrupting their delivery schedules?
This talk will discuss a real case, talk about what went wrong and what we
are planning to do about it, and how similar situations might be prevented
in other organizations.
Mark Roberts - "The Impact of Iterative Development on CM"
Slides (838k)
The change of development process from a waterfall approach to an
iterative process presents many challenges for a development team. Shorter
timescales, a higher degree of focus on requirements and earlier testing are
all key aspects of an iterative approach that have an impact across all
areas of a project. This presentation will focus on the effect of such a
change on configuration and change management.
Alan Jezek - "Implementing Process Control to comply with the FDA
electronic signature and records regulations"
This presentation will provide an introduction into US and ICH
regulations affecting computer quality and validations for the Life Sciences
industry. To comply, affected companies must implement processes and tools
to prevent unauthorised changes and demonstrate auditability and
traceability of changes. This presentation covers the scope of the
regulation, the scope of impacted computer systems, how companies are
addressing compliance, how companies are responding to the CSV (computerised
systems validation) requirement, compliance challenges, and a case study of
a change control implementation at a big Pharmaceutical company.
The CM Academy (CMA) at Ericsson has for a number of years held seminars
and courses in the CM & RM area - both tools and processes. It has developed
the strategies for global rollout of the CM & RM tool eMAtrix Reference
System (MARS), developed the CM Framework and RM Framework that are the CM &
RM models used at Ericsson including process, method, procedures. It has
also introduced the CM Certification program and conducted CM and RM
consulting for both tools and processes.
In order to spread CM awareness at Ericsson CMA has developed and used
"the LEGO game". It has been used at seminars, courses, workshops etc. The
game has been much appreciated - even amongst experienced Configuration
Managers. During this presentation delegates will actually play the game,
and we will then have a discussion of the outcome and other methods of
spreading CM awareness at Ericsson will be presented.
