Managing the improvement of SCM process

This article presents a framework for improving the Software Configuration Management (SCM) process, that includes a maturity model to assess software organizations and an approach to guide the transition from diagnosis to action planning. The maturity model and assessment tool are useful to identify the degree of satisfaction for practices considered key for SCM. The transition approach is also important because the application of a model to produce a diagnosis is just a first step, organizations are demanding the generation of action plans to implement the recommendations. The proposed framework has been used to assess a number of software organizations and to generate the basis to build an action plan for improvement. In summary, this article shows that the maturity model and action planning approach are instrumental to reach higher SCM control and visibility, therefore producing higher quality software.