Configuration Management
30 Jan 2017Configuration management is a necessary skill to have when building and maintaining complex software systems. Proper configuration management allows teams to oversee development, and maintain consistency and performance of a product. Without proper management, a team may experience troubles working together, configuration management helps with this problem.From my experiences with working in groups, keeping everyone up to date with the project’s status is one of the most important aspects of teamwork. If everyone is not immediately updated, or updated simutaneously, about an important change, ideas and work tend to get lost and time can potentially be wasted.
For example, in my previous ICS class, ICS 426, we were split into groups for the entirety of the whole semester; the thing that made it more difficult was that it was an online class. In order for everyone to keep up to date we used google docs to store all of our assignments we were currently working on. Our communications were through email and comments left in the docs, which both proved to be very useful. Whenever an update was made, we could rely on google docs to keep a log of who made the changes, when they were made, and where they were made. If the update was important enough, an email would be sent out to each group member in the hopes of getting immediate feedback.
In regards to Git and GitHub, and which made the other popular, the first one I’ve heard of was GitHub. It was only after knowing GitHub for about a year that I finally realised that Git was a thing. In my opinion, I would say GitHub made Git popular, mostly because GitHub is more like the social networking side of the professional computer science world. We are more likely to see someone sharing thier GitHub page to share something of interest.