Experience report on the maturity of configuration management for embedded software

Abstract

The growth of software applications and the need to maintain application-specific software packages have forced industrial organisations to develop their configuration management processes. Configuration Management (CM) is often developed as part of the whole software process, but CM may also be developed, e.g. from the viewpoint of product management. Our experiences indicate that CM is indeed not usually integrated in product management and does not support multi-product, application-specific software production. In Small and Medium size Enterprises (SME) CM is often limited to occasional ad hoc practices. This situation suggests that systematic procedures for evolving industrial software configuration management schemes are needed. We have developed an incremental approach to building CM environments in cooperation with several industrial embedded systems manufacturers. In this paper, we describe the approach and the experience of using it in a number of applications. The experience is based on cooperation with companies for which practical solutions have been developed taking into account their different maturity level of CM.