Agile SCM is Testing

Steve Berczuk, Robert Cowhan, and Brad Appleton (Berczuk and Appleton are authors of the excellent book, Software Configuration Management Patterns) recently published an article called “Agile SCM is Testing” at CMCrossroads. In the article the authors clearly make the assertion that testing and SCM are not separate:

People care that their system works as expected, the functionality was added as desired and not removed accidentally. We want to ensure that the value of our configurations is increasing over time rather than decreasing! To verify these things you need to test the working application. In this sense you can’t fulfill the goals of SCM without testing.

Along with several other salient references, the authors point to our book on Continuous Integration: Improving Software Quality and Reducing Risk. In particular, they reference our advice on quality and policy metrics (note, much of this is in the “Continuous Inspection” chapter) as enablers to a more effective development ecosystem.