New IT DevOps is about establishing an industrialization which, on demand and under the pressure from the business, customers and other stakeholders, finds a way to work more productively and increase the quality of outcomes.

• DevOps in New IT is also a key enabler of Agile. It establishes a rigorous process for all phases of software development to help deliver more predictable, agile, efficient processes and higher quality outcomes at every stage.
• After the coding and manual code review tasks are completed, the remaining activities including Merging, Build, Static Code Analysis, Unit & Functional Testing are entirely automated in DevOps, which means deployment could happen in a matter of few minutes.
• SCM plays a crucial role in DevOps to not only store its code base and artefacts but also define a code base policy to become a key enabler of Continuous Integration/Continuous Delivery.

Software Configuration Management (SCM) is the back bone of Continuous Integration and thus is critical to DevOps. As demand on software developers increase, and IT is under pressure from the business, customers and other stakeholders, there is a need to deliver like never; finding a way to work more productively and increase the quality of outcomes is essential. DevOps is about establishing that industrialization. DevOps is also a key enabler of Agile. Thanks to its ability to move rapidly and efficiently through the development lifecycle. To achieve all this, DevOps establishes a rigorous process for all phases of software development to help deliver more predictable, agile, efficient processes and higher quality outcomes at every stage. DevOps is transforming how software organizations operate taking web scale and fortune 500 companies to the next level of performance.

This article is to understand Why SCM, What is SCM, What is the right branching and merging' strategy for my SCM?, What tools to use? etc. This article from my understanding and few researches on this subject.

A computer program tells the computer or a set of systems how to work or what to do? When we envision computer programs we typically think of source code which has the ability to interact with layers of application, operating system and hardware. The concept of Software Configuration Management emerged from the need to control and re-use such computer programs.

The simplest definition of Software Configuration Management (SCM) is to control the software assets of an organization so they can be tracked, reported, improved & reused.

Why SCM?An simple view helps understanding bit more

This simplistic concept of version control has evolved over the years wherein every component of a computer software can now be controlled, provisioned and written as code. You can control a host of Configuration Items depicted below:

SCM forms the core of an application development life-cycle as depicted below:

SCM has lived as a singular/segregated discipline for long and required years of expertise to do it right. While we rotate towards NewIT, SCM today forms the CORE of DevOps and is an integral part of the product development life-cycle. DevOps practices of Continuous Integration, Delivery & Deployment depend on a strong SCM process for its success.

The interconnected value streams of change management,source control and CI/CDstay hand in hand. Regardless of whether you are doing traditional (Waterfall/Agile) application development or running an advanced microservices factory with containerized application development, you will need to control artefacts at all stages of your software development. These artefacts can range from derived objects of builds, technology blueprints defining your continuous integration, delivery pipelines, configurations defining your deployments, container images running your tools and applications, or infrastructure templates you use to provision your environments.

In conclusion of this blog, let's remember 'everything in software evolution can be controlled, tracked & evolved'. 

Better SCM practices will allow you to effectively use, evolve & re-use your automation. 

SCM in theNEW is embedded in DevOps practices of Continuous Integration, Delivery & Deployment.

Sunil Khatri

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