Anti-patterns and Patterns in Software Configuration Management by William Brown
Antipatterns are an emerging and controversial new area in the patterns community. Where design patterns identify different types of procedures, designs, or code that worked in object-oriented projects, antipatterns target those common mistakes, defects, errors, or difficult people that can sink object-oriented projects and systems. Configuration Management (CM) is managing the evolution of a software project - managing the revisions or changes to the product after it is first released. This phase is important in a product's ongoing life-cycle because CM helps to ensure that all improvements are implemented in a timely and accurate fashion. In addition, CM ensures that product testing occurs and is accurately documented so that the test findings can be incorporated into improving the design of the product with the next version. This book continues where the first book on antipatterns by this author team left off. In the first book, they focused on the areas of design, architecture, and management, in other words - people issues. With this book, they focus on the area of Configuration Management and document over 20 antipatterns and ten design patterns that exist during this stage of a product's development.