There are more requirements for business to be able to run its operations successfully in terms of legal compliance and revenue streams optimisations. Businesses are placing high demands on Information and Communication Technology (ICT) to adapt to changing conditions. However, ICT organisations tasked with providing increased service levels at lower costs do not have the resources to reinvent itself with every technological or regulatory change. Without frameworks in place to leverage automation and best practices, these ICT, organisations are consumed with the day-to-day operations of ICT with little time and few resources left to develop new services that add value to the business. There is, therefore, a definite requirement for a central repository system in order to enhance ICT service delivery and strategy for continuing to improve service, lowering per-service delivery costs and enabling ICT organisations to bring new services that support competitive advantages. The company of choice in the study is Sentech, which has recently adopted some of the Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) processes; these are service desk, incident management, and change management. The company is still in the middle of deciding on whether to implement the configuration management process which will eventually lead to Configuration Management Database (CMDB). This study attempted to indicate the role and the importance of running the CMDB together with the rest of other ITI L processes. The study also indicated how the other processes cannot function effectively without a proper CMDB platform. The primary objective of the study was to identify the importance and the role of CMDB in an ICT environment. The organisation implemented a number of processes such as configuration and change management. To be successful with using the ITIL change management process, it is important that the people, processes, and technologies work together in a coordinated manner to overcome the political roadblocks that usually inhibit cooperation between groups in the same organisation. The study has indicated that the current ITIL processes, such as change management are not achieving the required results due to a lack of proper CMDB. General recommendations on the implementation of the CMOB based on the study were: •Get executive and Board of Directors' support on the implementation of CMOB. •The organisation needs to redefine the role of the General Manager - ICT to a more appropriate role of Chief Information Officer reporting directly to the board. •The organisation must define detailed business processes and procedures. •The organisation must set a clear scope of the CMOB. •The relevant stakeholders on the CMOB must be identified . •A full state of the current ICT processes must be determined. •The business case on the CMOS must be formulated and documented. •Set goals on what the CMOB will have to achieve. •The organisation must create a plan on the implementation of the CMOB. •Identify responsibilities on maintaining the CMOS. •Create awareness within the organisation around CMOB. •Training on CMOB must be offered to the personnel. •The organisation must baseline all ICT assets. •Plan for ongoing management of the CMOB. It is believed that the objective of the study has been met. From the investigation, it has been clear that there is a dire need for an implementation of a central repository system like the CMOS to support other service delivery and support processes. If the recommendations are implemented within Sentech, the company will secure a more effective and efficient service delivery on the ICT platform. Furthermore, Sentech can become an ICT leader and gain a competitive advantage over its fellow competitors. / Thesis (M.B.A.)--North-West University, Vaal Triangle Campus, 2010.

There are more requirements for business to be able to run its operations successfully in terms of legal compliance and revenue streams optimisations. Businesses are placing high demands on Information and Communication Technology (ICT) to adapt to changing conditions. However, ICT organisations tasked with providing increased service levels at lower costs do not have the resources to reinvent itself with every technological or regulatory change. Without frameworks in place to leverage automation and best practices, these ICT, organisations are consumed with the day-to-day operations of ICT with little time and few resources left to develop new services that add value to the business. There is, therefore, a definite requirement for a central repository system in order to enhance ICT service delivery and strategy for continuing to improve service, lowering per-service delivery costs and enabling ICT organisations to bring new services that support competitive advantages. The company of choice in the study is Sentech, which has recently adopted some of the Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) processes; these are service desk, incident management, and change management. The company is still in the middle of deciding on whether to implement the configuration management process which will eventually lead to Configuration Management Database (CMDB). This study attempted to indicate the role and the importance of running the CMDB together with the rest of other ITI L processes. The study also indicated how the other processes cannot function effectively without a proper CMDB platform. The primary objective of the study was to identify the importance and the role of CMDB in an ICT environment. The organisation implemented a number of processes such as configuration and change management. To be successful with using the ITIL change management process, it is important that the people, processes, and technologies work together in a coordinated manner to overcome the political roadblocks that usually inhibit cooperation between groups in the same organisation. The study has indicated that the current ITIL processes, such as change management are not achieving the required results due to a lack of proper CMDB. General recommendations on the implementation of the CMOB based on the study were: •Get executive and Board of Directors' support on the implementation of CMOB. •The organisation needs to redefine the role of the General Manager - ICT to a more appropriate role of Chief Information Officer reporting directly to the board. •The organisation must define detailed business processes and procedures. •The organisation must set a clear scope of the CMOB. •The relevant stakeholders on the CMOB must be identified . •A full state of the current ICT processes must be determined. •The business case on the CMOS must be formulated and documented. •Set goals on what the CMOB will have to achieve. •The organisation must create a plan on the implementation of the CMOB. •Identify responsibilities on maintaining the CMOS. •Create awareness within the organisation around CMOB. •Training on CMOB must be offered to the personnel. •The organisation must baseline all ICT assets. •Plan for ongoing management of the CMOB. It is believed that the objective of the study has been met. From the investigation, it has been clear that there is a dire need for an implementation of a central repository system like the CMOS to support other service delivery and support processes. If the recommendations are implemented within Sentech, the company will secure a more effective and efficient service delivery on the ICT platform. Furthermore, Sentech can become an ICT leader and gain a competitive advantage over its fellow competitors. / Thesis (M.B.A.)--North-West University, Vaal Triangle Campus, 2010.

Agile Software Development has gained popularity with their people centric view and their common practices for developing software in today&rsquo / s volatile business world where change on requirements is unavoidable. However / the efficiency of the project depends on the communication and the collaboration of the team, which are supported by the co-location of the team. But in some cases colocation of the team cannot be realized, thus agile processes should also support distributed teams. This point was observed by Kircher, Jain, Corsaro, and Levine [31] and they suggested Distributed eXtreme Programming (DXP) after they prepared a study using offthe- shelf software products in order to replace the effect of face-toface communication on the efficiency of the application of agile processes with the aid gathered from tool support. In this study some available tool support for distributed agile software development is investigated and a tool is developed and presented in order to support software configuration management as well as increasing collaboration and communication of the team. The tool is then evaluated from a user&rsquo / s perspective and it is compared with some available software configuration management tools.

Thesis (M.Eng. (Computer Enginnering)) -- University of Pretoria, 2007. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 105-109)

Gerência de Configuração de Software é a disciplina que define conceitos e métodos baseados nos quais engenheiros de software conseguem manter sob controle a evolução de complexos produtos de software. Todos os princípios básicos da GCS foram implementados com sucesso em diversas ferramentas comerciais, mas as abordagens mais avançadas propostas nos últimos anos ainda não são utilizadas em ambientes reais de desenvolvimento, principalmente pela alta complexidade destas propostas – impedindo a sua implementação e utilização de forma adequada. Com o objetivo de introduzir uma solução simples e flexível para gerenciar configurações de software, este trabalho apresenta o SCM_TOO – Software Configurations Managed using a Temporal Object-Oriented data model, cuja principal característica é o uso da orientação a objeto para modelar o produto de software e as modificações aplicadas a ele durante o seu tempo de vida. Além de disponibilizar mecanismos específicos para manipular arquivos e usuários do sistema, o SCM_TOO aplica técnicas de bancos de dados temporais para suportar a evolução da aplicação e armazenar o histórico de modificações realizadas ao longo do tempo. O modelo define também um mecanismo de versionamento baseado em mudanças, no qual cada alteração realizada no software é identificada como uma entidade lógica no repositório de dados e pode ser utilizada na geração de novas baselines do produto. Esta proposta complementa o tradicional versionamento baseado em estados e aumenta a eficiência e flexibilidade do modelo sem acrescentar uma complexidade desnecessária. / Software Configuration Management is the discipline that defines concepts and methods based on which software engineers keep under control the evolution of complex software products. All the basic SCM principles have been successfully implemented in several commercial tools, but none of the advanced approaches proposed in the last years is currently used in real development environments, due to their high complexity – making the proper implementation and utilization almost impossible. Aiming to introduce a simple, flexible and powerful solution to manage software configurations, this work presents SCM_TOO – Software Configurations Managed using a Temporal Object-Oriented data model, whose main characteristic is using the object-oriented paradigm to model the software product and the modifications applied to it during its lifetime. Along with specific mechanisms to handle files and system users, SCM_TOO applies temporal databases techniques to support the application evolution and store the modifications realized on it. The model also defines a change-based versioning mechanism, in which every modification performed on the software is identified as a logical entity in the data repository and can be used to generate new product baselines. This approach complements the traditional state-based versioning and increases the model efficiency and flexibility without imposing unnecessary complexity.

Gerência de Configuração de Software é a disciplina que define conceitos e métodos baseados nos quais engenheiros de software conseguem manter sob controle a evolução de complexos produtos de software. Todos os princípios básicos da GCS foram implementados com sucesso em diversas ferramentas comerciais, mas as abordagens mais avançadas propostas nos últimos anos ainda não são utilizadas em ambientes reais de desenvolvimento, principalmente pela alta complexidade destas propostas – impedindo a sua implementação e utilização de forma adequada. Com o objetivo de introduzir uma solução simples e flexível para gerenciar configurações de software, este trabalho apresenta o SCM_TOO – Software Configurations Managed using a Temporal Object-Oriented data model, cuja principal característica é o uso da orientação a objeto para modelar o produto de software e as modificações aplicadas a ele durante o seu tempo de vida. Além de disponibilizar mecanismos específicos para manipular arquivos e usuários do sistema, o SCM_TOO aplica técnicas de bancos de dados temporais para suportar a evolução da aplicação e armazenar o histórico de modificações realizadas ao longo do tempo. O modelo define também um mecanismo de versionamento baseado em mudanças, no qual cada alteração realizada no software é identificada como uma entidade lógica no repositório de dados e pode ser utilizada na geração de novas baselines do produto. Esta proposta complementa o tradicional versionamento baseado em estados e aumenta a eficiência e flexibilidade do modelo sem acrescentar uma complexidade desnecessária. / Software Configuration Management is the discipline that defines concepts and methods based on which software engineers keep under control the evolution of complex software products. All the basic SCM principles have been successfully implemented in several commercial tools, but none of the advanced approaches proposed in the last years is currently used in real development environments, due to their high complexity – making the proper implementation and utilization almost impossible. Aiming to introduce a simple, flexible and powerful solution to manage software configurations, this work presents SCM_TOO – Software Configurations Managed using a Temporal Object-Oriented data model, whose main characteristic is using the object-oriented paradigm to model the software product and the modifications applied to it during its lifetime. Along with specific mechanisms to handle files and system users, SCM_TOO applies temporal databases techniques to support the application evolution and store the modifications realized on it. The model also defines a change-based versioning mechanism, in which every modification performed on the software is identified as a logical entity in the data repository and can be used to generate new product baselines. This approach complements the traditional state-based versioning and increases the model efficiency and flexibility without imposing unnecessary complexity.

Este trabalho investiga a integração entre a gestão de itens da WBS de projetos e os itens da configuração de produtos, visando um acompanhamento mais eficiente de projetos de desenvolvimento de produto. Trata-se de uma pesquisa-ação na qual se propôs um modelo de interface entre sistemas de gestão de projetos e sistemas de gestão de configuração e empreendeu-se uma análise de sua aplicação em uma empresa de desenvolvimento de software. A interface define um mecanismo para apurar o trabalho desenvolvido, a partir das alterações dos itens da configuração e, através do relacionamento entre estes itens e os pacotes de trabalho da WBS, exportar as informações sobre início, término e trabalho realizado para as respectivas atividades do projeto. O seu objetivo é auxiliar o acompanhamento em projetos complexos, seja com um grande número de atividades, ou aqueles realizados por consórcios de empresas. São apresentados os conceitos básicos sobre gerenciamento de projetos e gerenciamento da configuração do produto; além dos processos, atividades relacionadas e análise comparativa entre os sistemas de gerenciamento existentes. Os resultados obtidos foram: um levantamento dos principais problemas relacionados com a relação entre sistemas de gestão de projetos e de gestão de configuração, uma lista de requisitos para a integração destes sistemas, a definição e modelagem de uma interface que apóie esta integração e um exemplo prático de aplicação da interface proposta. / This work performs an investigation about the WBS and product configuration items, aiming to improve the tracking activity during the project management effort. It is an action research in witch was proposed a model to integrate project management and configuration management systems and was analyzed this model through the application in a specific software development company. The interface defines a way to identify the project work from the configuration item changes at change management application and review information about start, finish and performed work at project management ones. In challenger project’s, involving to much activities or complex enterprise clusters, tracking is a complex activity because it is dependent to the capacity to measure all project results. This work presents the basic concepts about project management and configuration management, the activities related to these topics, and project management software evaluations. The results are: an study of the problems and requirements related with the WBS and configuration items integration; requirements for this kind of application; the design of an interface to support the integration of the traditional and simple project management and configuration management applications; and a practical example to the use of this interface.

Gerência de Configuração de Software é a disciplina que define conceitos e métodos baseados nos quais engenheiros de software conseguem manter sob controle a evolução de complexos produtos de software. Todos os princípios básicos da GCS foram implementados com sucesso em diversas ferramentas comerciais, mas as abordagens mais avançadas propostas nos últimos anos ainda não são utilizadas em ambientes reais de desenvolvimento, principalmente pela alta complexidade destas propostas – impedindo a sua implementação e utilização de forma adequada. Com o objetivo de introduzir uma solução simples e flexível para gerenciar configurações de software, este trabalho apresenta o SCM_TOO – Software Configurations Managed using a Temporal Object-Oriented data model, cuja principal característica é o uso da orientação a objeto para modelar o produto de software e as modificações aplicadas a ele durante o seu tempo de vida. Além de disponibilizar mecanismos específicos para manipular arquivos e usuários do sistema, o SCM_TOO aplica técnicas de bancos de dados temporais para suportar a evolução da aplicação e armazenar o histórico de modificações realizadas ao longo do tempo. O modelo define também um mecanismo de versionamento baseado em mudanças, no qual cada alteração realizada no software é identificada como uma entidade lógica no repositório de dados e pode ser utilizada na geração de novas baselines do produto. Esta proposta complementa o tradicional versionamento baseado em estados e aumenta a eficiência e flexibilidade do modelo sem acrescentar uma complexidade desnecessária. / Software Configuration Management is the discipline that defines concepts and methods based on which software engineers keep under control the evolution of complex software products. All the basic SCM principles have been successfully implemented in several commercial tools, but none of the advanced approaches proposed in the last years is currently used in real development environments, due to their high complexity – making the proper implementation and utilization almost impossible. Aiming to introduce a simple, flexible and powerful solution to manage software configurations, this work presents SCM_TOO – Software Configurations Managed using a Temporal Object-Oriented data model, whose main characteristic is using the object-oriented paradigm to model the software product and the modifications applied to it during its lifetime. Along with specific mechanisms to handle files and system users, SCM_TOO applies temporal databases techniques to support the application evolution and store the modifications realized on it. The model also defines a change-based versioning mechanism, in which every modification performed on the software is identified as a logical entity in the data repository and can be used to generate new product baselines. This approach complements the traditional state-based versioning and increases the model efficiency and flexibility without imposing unnecessary complexity.

Diploma thesis is focused on utilization of best practices from IT Infrastructure Library v3 in specific company. ITIL v3 is described in 5 books and by 26 core processes. The objective of this diploma thesis is to find only relevant processes which are designed and described for selected company. General information about ITIL and benefits which are delivered from using ITIL can be found in theoretical part. Frameworks and standards that have synergy with ITIL are also described in theoretical part. Specific company is introduced in practical part, where can be also found quantitative research method, which is used for choosing specific project. Release and Deployment Management, Supplier Management, Asset and Configuration Management is chosen based on results from research.

The main focus of this paper is to improve the ServiceNow Discovery tool in two areas. The first one is the Application Dependency Mapping (ADM). ServiceNow is currently not able to determine the type of the relationship between two applications. As a solution, a new application was designed and implemented. It enables human element to define the type of relationship before it is found by the Discovery. This application also makes it posiible to define rules, which affect the behaviour of ADM. Second area, taken into account in this paper, is the discovery of application configuration. Weaknesses of Discovery are identified and solution is implemented.