Implementing and Integrating Product Data Management and Software Configuration Management (Artech House Computing Library)

Rating:
Summary: Excellent guide to SCM-PDM Integration
Review: Product Data Management (PDM) is a class of enterprise software that manages product data and relationships-facilitating innovation and increasing engineering productivity. It allows you to manage, control, and access data surrounding new product design, engineering, and manufacturing processes. By providing controlled and secure global data access, PDM empowers the organization to deliver higher-quality products to market faster and more efficiently. This process impacts the entire life cycle of a product, as employees at each phase in the product development process can access the right information at the right time.

Software Configuration management (SCM) is the discipline of identifying the configuration of a system at discrete points in time for purposes of systematically controlling changes to this configuration and maintaining the integrity and traceability of this configuration throughout the system life cycle. SCM is a collection of techniques which coordinate and control the construction of a software system. Today's software systems consist of a myriad of component parts each of which evolves as it is developed and maintained. SCM ensures that this evolution is efficient and controlled, so that the individual components fit together to form a coherent whole.

So we can say that while PDM ensures that the product development goes on smoothly, SCM make sure that the software development is done efficiently. Today most products-both hardware and software-are becoming more and more complex. Another fact is that in today's environment neither software nor hardware can exist in isolation. Software is the integral part and the driving force in almost all machines and systems from mission critical applications like controlling the operations of satellites and Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles (ICBMs), air traffic control (ATC) systems, managing the functioning of banks and hospitals, handling the airline and railway reservation systems and so on to performing mundane tasks like operating a door locking system.

In the past the SCM and PDM disciplines have existed and evolved with little interaction. The SCM and PDM disciplines can help an organization to achieve greater efficiencies in its product development, marketing and customer support efforts. But the days of SCM and PDM working in isolation are gone. To survive, thrive and successfully compete in today's highly competitive business environment, the organizations must conceive, build, test and market high-quality products in the most efficient and effective manner. The customer support, bug fixes, product enhancements, product evolution, etc. must be done quickly (at internet speed) and with minimum wasted effort. In order to achieve these goals, the SCM and PDM disciplines must be integrated.

Only when the hardware and software development teams fully understands what is happening in the 'other world', only when the hardware-software boundaries disappear and only when the seamless information integration occurs between the hardware and software development environments, the organizations will be able to realize their full potential and become market leaders. If this is to happen, then the organizations should integrate their SCM and PDM efforts.

The book "Implementing and Integrating Product Data Management and Software Configuration Management" does an excellent job in teaching and guiding the organizations/practitioners to integrate their SCM and PDM disciplines successfully. The easy-to-read and engaging writing style combined with the excellent organization of the book has gone a long way in making the topics of SCM and PDM accessible and interesting to the readers.

The book contains 5 sections-Basic Principles of PDM and SCM, Similarities and Differences between PDM and SCM, Integration and Deployment, Case Studies and Tools and Standards Survey. The book develops the basics of both SCM and PDM from grounds up so that the reader who is not familiar with either discipline will not have to go elsewhere for understanding the concepts of SCM or PDM. For experts in the field, the introduction to the basics acts as a refresher.

Once the basics and concepts are established the authors get down to the business of detailing the methods and strategies of integrating PDM and SCM. The authors provide detailed descriptions of PDM and SCM integration processes so that the users can get a clear picture of the benefits of SCM-PDM integration. This is followed up with 6 excellent case studies from multinational organizations like Sun, Ericsson, ABB, etc. These case studies are worth their weight in gold as they illustrate the challenges and opportunities of the SCM-PDM integration efforts.

The last section consists of the SCM and PDM resources, brief descriptions of SCM and PDM tools and so on. This section also gives a short but excellent overview of Document Management System and its relation to SCM and PDM and a list of document management tools. Another very useful chapter in this section is the one that describes the major SCM, PDM and document management standards.

This book is a MUST read for engineers, developers and managers who develop today's sophisticated systems. This book is ideal for people who are trying to or who are entrusted with the task of integrating the SCM-PDM efforts of their organizations. This book will also be very useful for the SCM/PDM professionals who want to learn about the other discipline and how it relates to their own profession.

Rating:
Summary: Much needed convergence of disciplines
Review: When an industry expert and noted CM author such as Alexis Leon awards this book 5-stars you are assured that it's worth reading. I found this book to be unique in that it ties together two separate, but related, disciplines that share common goals, but diverge in terminology and approach.

The team of authors demonstrate a deep knowledge of product and software development life cycles, the key issues, practices and factors in each of these disciplines, and have produced a book that clarifies the differences and similarities. More importantly, they have integrated the two disciplines at the conceptual and best practices levels, and have distilled the terminologies of these disciplines to provide a convergent view of configuration management at the meta level. This feat makes this book one of the most valuable resources spanning two major topics - product data management and software configuration management. Moreover, it provides the key to attaining a single CM posture within an organization, which is coherent and has all roles working from the same set of processes and procedures, instead of two CM silos.

Scope and depth of the material in this book are wide and deep. The material does not leave a single important concept, issue or practice uncovered. It also contains best practices from both the PDM and SCM worlds, so it rates high in technical accuracy. More importantly, real life examples are used throughout to illustrate or reinforce concepts and practices.

There is only one area where this book is weak - it cites specific tools, which practically assures that this material will be outdated. However, the preface to this book contains the URL to the book's supporting web site, which does provide up-to-date information, which offsets this minor weakness. I highly recommend this book to all CM practitioners, especially those in product-centric companies. I also recommend augmenting this book with PDM Information Center (ASIN B0000A22J3) and CM Crossroads (ASIN B00009P31G).

Rating:
Summary: Much needed convergence of disciplines
Review: When an industry expert and noted CM author such as Alexis Leon awards this book 5-stars you are assured that it's worth reading. I found this book to be unique in that it ties together two separate, but related, disciplines that share common goals, but diverge in terminology and approach.

The team of authors demonstrate a deep knowledge of product and software development life cycles, the key issues, practices and factors in each of these disciplines, and have produced a book that clarifies the differences and similarities. More importantly, they have integrated the two disciplines at the conceptual and best practices levels, and have distilled the terminologies of these disciplines to provide a convergent view of configuration management at the meta level. This feat makes this book one of the most valuable resources spanning two major topics - product data management and software configuration management. Moreover, it provides the key to attaining a single CM posture within an organization, which is coherent and has all roles working from the same set of processes and procedures, instead of two CM silos.

Scope and depth of the material in this book are wide and deep. The material does not leave a single important concept, issue or practice uncovered. It also contains best practices from both the PDM and SCM worlds, so it rates high in technical accuracy. More importantly, real life examples are used throughout to illustrate or reinforce concepts and practices.

There is only one area where this book is weak - it cites specific tools, which practically assures that this material will be outdated. However, the preface to this book contains the URL to the book's supporting web site, which does provide up-to-date information, which offsets this minor weakness. I highly recommend this book to all CM practitioners, especially those in product-centric companies. I also recommend augmenting this book with PDM Information Center (ASIN B0000A22J3) and CM Crossroads (ASIN B00009P31G).