What Is Change Management in Software Development?
Change management in software development involves tracking and managing changes to artifacts, such as code and requirements. It's critical for effective application development.
5 Ways to Manage Change in Software Development
You need to effectively manage changes to requirements. That's the only way to bring quality software products to market on time.
But it's hard to do when you're managing processes manually.
Luckily, traceability in product lifecycle management helps you deliver:
- Faster releases
- Real-time visibility
- Cross-team collaboration
What Changes Were Made?
Track which changes were made to your product.
In product lifecycle management, you need visibility to changes that were made. These changes might be to requirements, code, or even tests.
Choosing a change management solution with flexible branching can help. You'll be able to manage releases and track configurations. Smart branches will retain extensive linking history. That alleviates manual merge pain (and makes sure that automatic code merges are right the first time).
Who Made Changes?
Find out who made a change in the development process.
What if a change happens to your code that you didn't authorize? With a change management solution, you can keep access secure and control who makes changes.
After all, change can lead to risk. But managing risk is easier than you might think.
Where Did a Change Happen?
Find out where a change happened in the application development process.
With a change management solution, you'll be able to see beyond "checked in." That means you'll know the true status of files in the development process.
You'll be able to answer questions like:
- When in the build was code reviewed?
- Did design documents go through the review process?
- Who can make changes to reviewed and approved files?
This is especially important to proving compliance.
How Does Change Impact Development?
Management expects to see impact analysis reports.
That means you need to report on how changes to things like requirements impacts development. And the only way to do that is through an impact analysis report.
Learn how, why, and when to do an impact analysis.
What Else Did the Change Impact?
If you make a change to a requirement, what else changes?
Making a change to a requirement will have an impact on your testing and verification processes. That's why you need traceability in product lifecycle management.
Traceability begins when you link that change to the request. And you need a solution that implements traceability from requirements through the source code implementation and changes.
Learn how to strengthen your traceability in product lifecycle management (and effectively manage change).