Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips

Technical projects have plenty of opportunities to misunderstand what someone else is doing. Help yourself. If something is different, give it a different name.

This is a post about a part of configuration management. But don’t stop reading yet. This makes sense and is not painful.

Things change in technical projects. Software is especially apt to change. You take a module, adapt it to a different situation, and use it. You have new functions without much new work.

Now comes the confusion.

The software module is different and it does something different. Then someone wants to use the old version of the software before it was different. How do they know if they are using the old version or the new, different version?

Here is a simple rule:

If it is different, give it a different name.

That isn’t too complicated, is it? This is the identification part of configuration management (see below for the four parts of CM). You have something that your are going to use, so identify it, i.e., give it a name.

The easiest way to give a different item a different name is with version numbers. This works with software, hardware, documents, and just about anything. “Document, Revision A” differs from “Document, Original Version.” Software module version 2.0 differs from Software module version 1.0 and 1.1 and 1.2 and so on.

The version numbering requires that you have a version number system that everyone understands and uses consistently. Often, that is not the case.

The next easiest way to give a different item a different name is to give a different item a different name. For example, “fft.c” becomes “fasterfft.c” and “motherboard” become “Fall2011Motherboard.” See – this isn’t difficult, and it removes a lot of confusion.

If you follow this advice, your projects won’t be free of misunderstandings. You have people working on your projects, so you will still have misunderstandings. You will, however, have fewer misunderstandings and you should sleep a little better at night.

NOTE: The four parts of Configuration Management are:

1. Identification – name items
2. Control – change identified items in an agreed-upon manner
3. Audit – look at your items to see what you really have as opposed to what you have on paper
4. Status Accounting – how are things going?