the Practice of Software Configuration Management

Software Configuration Management (SCM) is an important discipline in professional software development and maintenance. The importance of SCM has increased as programs have become larger, more long-lasting, and more mission and life critical. This article discusses the evolution of This article has been developed under the auspices of the Impact Project. The aim of the project is to provide a scholarly study of the impact that software engineering research—both academic and industrial—has had upon the practice. The principal output of the project is a series of individual papers covering the impact upon practice of research in selected major areas of software engineer-ing. Each of these papers is being published in ACM TOSEM. Additional information about th