Original URL: https://www.theregister.com/2007/05/25/bcs_cmsg_conference/
CMSG gets ITIL
A belated postcard from the BCS CMSG Conference
Posted in Software, 25th May 2007 09:25 GMT
Editor's blog The British Computer Society Configuration Management special interest group (the BCS CMSG) has rather an oxymoronic name perhaps - who's interested in CM? Well, I am. I was interested enough to go to its bi-annual conference last week, and so, probably, is anyone actually involved in doing CM.
CM can be defined as: "The process of identifying and defining the Configuration Items in a system, recording and reporting the status of Configuration Items and Requests For Change, and verifying the completeness and correctness of Configuration Items" (from this glossary). It can be applied to source code, of course, but its scope is considerably wider than that.
CM is the foundation of good IT governance - and if programmers aren't seen as supporting that, they'll lose, first, the respect of the business and, second, the nice salaries the business pays them. There are plenty of outsourcing companies that'll bring in as many practically-experienced and fully qualified process specialists as any business could dream of – and, possibly unfairly, the internal IT group often doesn't have a high reputation with the business to counter this with.
The BCS CMSG conference currently alternates with a technology showcase, although it includes a small exhibition, showcasing vendor's wares. It was sponsored this time by Serena, MKS, Aldon, Marval, Perforce, Square Mile, Codicesoftware, Software Acumen, Telelogic, Unicom, TechExcel and electric cloud. Which is a good working list of both the serious established CM players and some interesting newcomers – although IBM and Microsoft, for example, were conspicuous by their absence from the list. However, Kevin Lee of the IBM Software Group presented on the "Politics, Patterns and Process of implementing distributed software CM", so IBM was participating.
If there was a theme to this conference it was probably ITIL, which has been astonishingly successful – not only as an internationally-accepted guide to good practice for IT operations but also as the basis for ISO 20000 and an advert for UK, plc generally. For developers, ITIL is probably best viewed as a requirements spec for building good operations manageability into IT systems
It's strange that a government that can sponsor a "good practice" standard so effectively should be involved in so many IT disasters. Perhaps the lesson is that good practice is sometimes much harder to implement systematically than it is to formulate.
Anyway, the conference gave us a chance to meet and talk with both the woman behind the current ITIL v3 Refresh, Sharon Taylor, ITIL's chief architect; and also the woman behind the revised Service Transition book in the revised ITIL library, Shirley Lacy (Shirley is on the committee of the CMSG). They both helped to increase attendees' confidence in the aims of the Refresh, which promotes a "whole lifecycle" view of the operational delivery of automated services and its quality.
There were some controversial talks too. Marc Girod of Iona suggested that Rational and IBM had irretrievably compromised the change granularity in Atria's original ClearCase vision when turning it into part of its ALM – and that no effective replacement is available.
And Ryan Lloyd of MKS suggested that release/build management was the major missing piece in many ALM stories. I remember thinking, when IBM took over BuildForge and was very enthusiastic about at last adding build management (at least) to its ALM toolset, that all too often the ALM a vendor talks about is limited to what its tools can handle effectively at the time.
There was plenty of discussion about the future of CM. One, ironic, suggestion was that if the CMSG renamed itself to the CMDB-SG, it'd attract more attention, as CMDB Configuration Management Database) is sexy just now. It's a fair point – if you are in the sort of organisation that doesn't understand why Configuration Management is more than Version Control and Change Management, then buying a CMDB seems just like buying a ticked ITIL compliance box on the cheap. Be warned, however - getting your data into a CMDB once you've installed it, and getting any actual measurable benefit out of it, may be harder than you think.
Less ironically, moving CM out of the IT silo and treating it as a business service was discussed – and Robert Cowham of Vaccaperna Systems (the CMSG chair), was at least contemplating hosted CM offerings to reduce the barrier to entry. There seemed little resistance in the conference to the idea that CM is about more than just source code and the IT group.
In a mature organisation, CM is about identifying and managing everything needed to deliver an automated business service – source code is part of this, but phones, desks, and even toilets might be vital to service delivery too. And the business isn't impressed if it is told, say, that its ecommerce facility is going to be unavailable for the day, "but it doesn't matter, because all the databases are fully available, it's just the aircon that's down".
CM is a fundamental part of ITIL service delivery and the underpinning of change management and version control. How can you manage change if you aren't sure of what is changing? Well, you have an "assumed" configuration, managed in peoples' heads and documented in an unstructured way in a variety of notes, scripts, and reports – which can work for a time but is very risky.
There was discussion about the move to process-driven CM and more integration with other tools (Serena is a passionate believer in the ALF Eclipse initiative, which should allow "plug and play" tools integration, although the industry as a whole seems divided on this). One issue identified was that many vendors were still selling silo'd products with clumsy point-to-point tool integration.
And, unexpectedly perhaps, several people identified Subversion and open source as a threat. OK, some of these people represented vendors of integrated process-driven tools, but the feeling was more general than that, despite the general agreement that Subversion was an excellent and highly effective CVS-replacement tool, and that open source often delivered excellent products.
The problem with Subversion (and the availability of open source) is that it can highlight issues with an organisation's maturity and management. If CM process has been imposed on an organisation, without any attempt to get real buy-in from those affected at the sharp end, Subversion allows the programmers to download free software which then lets them bypass company process and get away with it, because although Subversion only addresses part of the process, what it does do it does well.
The real issue here, of course, is that the current emphasis on governance, compliance, and process may tempt management to impose something like ITIL and purchase "reassuringly expensive" tools. However, instilling good practice is still a matter of people, process and technology, with people coming first. The real answer is to change a dysfunctional management culture, not to ban open source.
However, CM must deliver visible, immediate and incremental benefits – and not just benefits visible to the CEO or CIO, but benefits to the programmers at the sharp end too.
There were some downbeat aspects of this conference too. It was a little depressing to meet people that were successfully introducing good process into parts of their organisation - and then hearing that this wasn't being institutionalised across the organisation. This, it seems to me, is a maturity issue - in CMMI terms, low maturity companies can be successful and even adopt high-maturity process in particular areas, but the first step on the maturity ladder (after recognising what you've got in the way of process) is to migrate successful process to those areas which don't have it yet.
There was also some discussion about the costs of attending a two day conference like this one. Some delegates were spending their own money to attend, in the laudable interests of personal career development, but shouldn't their employer contribute to this? And there were stories of companies giving their staff ITIL webinars, because sending them to a face-to-face conference wasn't cost effective. I suspect that this is short sighted - the webinar gives you the facts, but the insights and enthusiasm needed to make a success of an ITIL implementation come from talking to people like Sharon Taylor and Shirley Lacy. And [just a small plug – Ed], joining the BCS and its CMSG (or other interest groups) gives you that chance.
To end on an upbeat note, this conference was a great opportunity for networking and gave attendees access to top practitioners in the field. And you could talk to them informally over the CMSG dinner, which should have helped to dispel any lingering ideas that CM people can't have fun.
The next such opportunity is on 19 July, when we can expect to hear some Configuration Management horror stories from an IT auditor. ®