Software Configuration Management in a Parallel Development Environment

The authors present a proposal of process re-engineering methodology, showing the general scheme of the methodology through a parallel algorithm. The main topic of this article is software quality assurance when issues of software configuration management, using rapid evolutionary prototyping in parallel developments, have to be considered. This methodology - and its underlying algorithm - was used in a project financed by the World Bank and managed by the Federal Ministry of Culture and Education of Argentina. The main goal of the project is to reform and improve the management of educational human resources for the governments of the Argentinian provinces participating in the project. The proposed methodology helps us to shorten the development and release cycles. The need to deliver products in less time means that organizations must work more efficiently and effectively throughout the entire development process and that the efforts for paralleling and controlling (software configuration management) have to be optimized from a time and quality viewpoint (software quality assurance). In fact, this situation has occurred in our project. Applying the steps and criteria of the proposed methodology, our team has gained efficiency and time in obtaining the final product.