Rating: 
Summary: Provides crucial SCM translations
Review: The authors provide useful generic definitions of the critical SCM patterns. They go onto provide direct mappings between specific tool vocabulary and the patterns. This mapping has been instrumental in establishing a common SCM vocabulary in cross division projects. SCM education and planning are greatly streamlined due to this important translation. "Patterns"is an essential dictionary on all SCM adventures.
Rating:
Summary: Provides crucial SCM translations
Review: The authors provide useful generic definitions of the critical SCM patterns. They go onto provide direct mappings between specific tool vocabulary and the patterns. This mapping has been instrumental in establishing a common SCM vocabulary in cross division projects. SCM education and planning are greatly streamlined due to this important translation. "Patterns"is an essential dictionary on all SCM adventures.
Rating: 
Summary: Accessible, and well suited for smaller teams
Review: The writing style is excellent and flows nicely, suiting a wide range of SCM folks from newbies to old hands. There's a lot of really good advice for small teams, well.Some examples of real-world setups would be nice, as I'd assume it's hard to go from this text directly to concrete details. Additionally, some of the patterns encouraged don't scale well past teams of about 50 developers or when you're dealing with a long-term multi-version piece of software that has folks working on the version 2 but also issuing QFEs, GDRs, and SPs concurrently on the old version and trying to keep them in sync on the new version. Of course, not many folks but MSFT have to do that! Still, making sure that your SCM story will work in servicing is arguably the hardest thing after making sure that you've got something developers can understand and use on a daily basis, and it's something that can really bite you if you do it wrong.
Rating:
Summary: Best CM practices book I've found
Review: This book could have also been called "Best CM and software development practices".
I've read many CM books over the years and this is one of those rare books that focuses on the "rubber meets the road" aspect of good CM and software development practices.
Many CM books out there are so theoretical that they are barely useful. This book answers many software development practice questions that I've had to address in my years of doing software process improvement and proprietary CM tool, ClearCase, Version Manager, Config Builder, Tracker, ClearQuest, and now PVCS Dimensions administration. Anyone who does CM for a living gets asked the "how do I do this" question where the question that first needs an answer is "what are you trying to do with the tool?".
This book addresses those questions in a 100% practical and easy to understand way. I recommend this book to anyone who is serious about process improvement and CM and knows that it's usually not what CM tools you have but what you do with them is what helps software development get done in a sane fashion.
Rating:
Summary: Best CM practices book I've found
Review: This book could have also been called "Best CM and software development practices".
I've read many CM books over the years and this is one of those rare books that focuses on the "rubber meets the road" aspect of good CM and software development practices.
Many CM books out there are so theoretical that they are barely useful. This book answers many software development practice questions that I've had to address in my years of doing software process improvement and proprietary CM tool, ClearCase, Version Manager, Config Builder, Tracker, ClearQuest, and now PVCS Dimensions administration. Anyone who does CM for a living gets asked the "how do I do this" question where the question that first needs an answer is "what are you trying to do with the tool?".
This book addresses those questions in a 100% practical and easy to understand way. I recommend this book to anyone who is serious about process improvement and CM and knows that it's usually not what CM tools you have but what you do with them is what helps software development get done in a sane fashion.
Rating:
Summary: A Required Handbook for SCM Practitioners
Review: This exceptionally clear and extremely concise handbook is a must read for all SCM practitioners. The book is filled with practical advice to solve classic configuration management problems that arise on software projects. The book begins with an overview of SCM concepts and a discussion of the role of SCM in agile software development. This discussion dispels the myth that software configuration management must be process heavy to be effective. Much of the book consists of a description of patterns (i.e., problems that occur over and over again) related to software configuration management. Each pattern is described in a brief chapter that begins with a question about a common SCM problem. For example, the chapter on the task level commit pattern begins with the question, "How much work should you do between submissions to the version control system?" Each chapter that presents an SCM pattern describes the circumstances in which the pattern is relevant. The authors explain the pattern with the help of easy-to-understand diagrams and brief narratives of situations from real software projects in which the pattern is relevant. Most chapters also include relevant references to books and papers that elaborate on material covered in the chapter. Perhaps the most valuable aspect of this book is that an SCM engineer can reference it when speaking to project management and members of the development team about common SCM pitfalls and practical techniques that can be used to correct or avoid these pitfalls.
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