Software Configuration Management

Software is often said to evolve, meaning that it is continually changing both during its formal development and usually during its in service life. Software configuration management has been defined by Bersoff et al. (1980) as the discipline of identifying the configuration of a system at given times for the purpose of systematically controlling changes to this configuration and maintaining the integrity and traceability of this configuration throughout the system life cycle. It is thus founded upon the successive creation of baselines (as previously described), each of which defines the product as it exists at that moment in time. Any change to an item appearing in a baseline must be controlled.