As far as software engineering is concerned, SCM, i.e. software configuration management can be referred to as an act of controlling and tracking changes with respect to software. Practices relating to configuration management are inclusive of establishment of the baselines and revision control.

SCM goes on to connect itself with having answered the question, “Someone performed something; how can the other person go on to reproduce it?” Usually the problem does not involve having produced it in an identical manner, but with incremental, controlled changes. Having answered this question then goes on to become an issue of having compared diverse results as well as of having analyzed differences of theirs. Conventional configuration management has always been focusing on the controlled creation of comparatively simple products. SCM implementers, now move further with having faced challenges with respect to comparatively minor increments which are under control of their own, in context of development of complex system.

Terminology

The terminology and history of SCM has often resulted in to controversy. As per experts, SCM has been described as a group of the activities designed for having controlled change through the identification of work products which have the likelihood of changing, establishing various relationships amongst them, having defined mechanisms to manage diverse versions of such work products, thereby having controlled changes that are imposed, along with reporting and auditing on changes that are made.

Source Configuration Management, i.e. SCM is one of the related practices which is commonly used for indicating that a spectrum of artifacts might be versioned and managed, inclusive of documents, software code, design models, or even directory structure.

Atria, which now is a portion of IBM is known for having made use of SCM for meaning ‘software configuration management’. ‘Gartner’ makes use of the term ‘software change and configuration management’.

Purposes

SCM goals consist of the following:

Configuration identification

It consists of the code you are working.

Configuration control

It consists of having controlled product release, along with changes of it.

Status accounting

It consists of having recorded and reported components’ status.

Review

It consists of having ensured completeness as well as consistency amongst components.

Build management

It consists of having managed tools and process utilized for builds.

Process management

It consists of ensured adherence to development process of organization.

Environment management

It comprises of having managed hardware and software which go on to host the system.

Teamwork

It consists of having facilitated team interactions concerned with process.

Defect tracking

It consists of having made sure that every defect goes on to have traceability, back to source.

Revision control

Revision control is better known as VCS, i.e. version control system, or source control can be referred to as management of the multiple revisions pertaining to same information unit. It’s usually made use of in software development and engineering for having managed ongoing management with regards to digital documents such as ‘application source code’, art resources like electronic models or blueprints, and the other projects which might be executed through a team. The changes pertaining to such documents are generally identified through the addition of letter code or a linked number, which is usually termed as ‘revision level’, ‘revision number’, or just ‘revision’. They are historically linked with person having made the change. Revision control’s usual form, for instance, possesses starting edition of the drawing which is assigned revision number ‘1’. The 1st change, when made results in to revision number being incremented to ‘2’. This process then goes on and on.

‘Version Control Systems’ most commonly happen to be stand-alone applications. However, revision control also gets embedded in different kinds of software such as word processors such as Google Docs, Pages, KOffice, OpenOffice.org Writer, Microsoft Word, spreadsheets such as Microsoft Excel, Google Spreadsheets, OpenOffice.org Calc, and in several systems pertaining to content management.

Software tools pertaining to revision control have been increasingly recognized for being essential for organization of the multi-developer projects.

Baseline

Baseline can be referred to as the process regarding management of change with respect to measurements, documentation, firmware, software, hardware, etc. It is a known fact that change needs a next state, apart from initial state, marking of the significant states, that too, within a chain of numerous changes goes on to become important. Identification with respect to significant states inside a configuration item’s revision history can be described as baseline identification’s purpose.

Conventionally, significant states can be defined as the ones which receive approval status on the formal level, either implicitly or explicitly. Nevertheless, such an approval status would generally be recognized on the public basis. A baseline might, thus, also move further with having marked the approved item of configuration. For instance- the project plan being signed off to execute. Similarly, having linked items of multiple configuration with baseline goes on to indicate that such items have been approved.