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Name of Skill

Software Configuration Management and Support

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Classification of Skill

In Software Engineering, Software Configuration Management(SCM or S/W CM) is a process to manage, organize, track and control changes to all the entities of the software during software development lifecycle in a systematic way. The purpose of SCM is to see that a software is produced with minimal mistakes. SCM practices include revision control and it can accurately determine who made it.

The main procedures found in a typical software configuration management system are :

1. Configuration identification : It is the process which defines the properties of configuration items and the following attributes are baselined.
2. Configuration control : It is a set of instructions which are required to change a configuration and to rebaseline them.
3. Configuration status documentation : It is the ability to record/report the any information related to that configuration object.
4. Configuration audits : An audit occurs everytime at project delivery or when a change is made whether it is functional or physical configuration.

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Prerequisites for Skill

A Software Configuration Management Administrator/Engineer should posses the following skills:

1: Experience with version control systems:

• Tracking changes
• Committing
• Revisions and changesets
• Getting updates
• Resolving conflicts
• Branching and Merging

2: Experience with Software Development LifeCycle(SDLC) process:

• Planning and Requirement Analysis
• Defining Requirements
• Designing Architecture
• Building the product
• Testing
• Deployement

3: Knowledge on Infrastructure/Applicaton and Configuration items:

Configuration Item(CI): A part of the system which can be self contained unit for change control.

The most commonly used CI's are the following:

• HWCI : Hardware type configuration item
• CI or CSCI : Software type configuration item
• System CI : System type configuration item
• NDCI : Non-developed configuration item
• COTSCI : Component Off the shelf configuration item

Below are few examples for Configuration Items:

Configuration Items	Common CI's
Services	Email, printing, collaboration, presentation, data processing, user registration
Software	Applications, databases, virtual machines, containers, licenses
Hardware	Servers, routers, computers, swetches
Devices	Laptops, tablets, smartphones,, keyboards, mice, monitors
Documents	Policies, governance, release notes, user guides, troubleshooting manuals
Locations	Offices, data centers, server rooms
Staff	Service desk agents, support specialists, developers

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Related Software Engineering Area(s)

1 - Release Management Release management is nothing but the process of planing, scheduling and managing a software build during different stages of software development lifecycle.

2 - Software Testing Software Testing is verification of the application in different with different use cases

3 - Devops DevOps is the process of automating and integration between software development and teams for faster building of applications with more reliable features.