We decided to dedicate one post to talk about what is source code management (SCM), and what it benefits as part of the range of source code management (SCM) theme topics.
SCM always talks about software development lifecycle (SDLC) context, it is developed and designed for help software development, team lead software development, application development executive, manager, director. If the deployment will include CI/CD pipeline, from package and release, staging and deployment, then tester, quality assurance (QA) may be one of the users for it. If the entire practice is SCM – CI / CD for the DevOps and further to seamless integration and automation for the security testing, then it will involve security analyst, Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) for the DevSecOps
Let’s get back to the topic of source code management (SCM), some use the term source code management system (SCMS), which is all about source control, source code version control (VC). It is used for tracking modifications to source code. Unless it is sole developer work, for sure under modern enterprise software development practice, it needs to distribute the source code over the team to do their coding work. Under that context, as you can imagine, keeping a running history of the changes made by various developers and testers on the codebase is very challenging without a dedicated system specialized in handling that. It allows developer and tester remote sync a copy to work on locally and then sync back, with the proper version control and tracking who check-in and who check-out basis.
How to make sure up-to-date and always working on accurate code is important before merging code from multiple sources and developers. It is also one of the best practices for making sure the quality of code by adopting the SCM or SCMS to help enforce it. The larger the project and more people involved in the shared codebase, the more benefits it can provide and productivity improvement. It is also one of the way people use to judge whether the software development follow the best practice or not, as you can not manage what you not know, from the various source code status, version control, proper approval process before merge the code, from the branch to main and provide automatically tracking and function for you documentation.
Regardless of the brand solution you go, at the very heart of the SCM is the code repository, a centralized server that stores all of an organization’s code and keeps track of all the projects and issue management, either on cloud or on premise basis.
As you can imagine, it also comes with the project and time management, so you know which developer spends how much time for each of the code tasks, as well as aggregate the team effort for it.
Here the quick sum up the typical benefits everyone expects from the adoption of source code management (SCM), at least some of it.
- Complete source and version control, this is the main purpose enterprise use for the first place. Off course with the version roll back for just-in-case scenarios.
- Enable team collaboration, modern enterprise software development is about team, and SCM allows the team work in the team work manner to get things done.
- Seamless workflow automation, in particular for larger projects, typically involves CI/CD seamless integration, delivery, deployment for the DevOps or DevSecOps, saving enterprises huge amounts of time
- Dashboard, analytics and reporting. As you can imagine, top management and external regulatory compliance needs those functions.
Modern source code management (SCM) can not be handled without consideration for the bigger DevOps lifecycle, in particular for the enterprise software development project, and even DevSecOps. You need to have an eye on what is going on for the value stream management (VSM) as well.
E-SPIN Group in the enterprise ICT solution supply, consultancy, project management, training and maintenance for corporation and government agencies did business across the region and via the channel. Feel free to contact E-SPIN for your project requirement and inquiry.
Other post you may be interest: