Change Management
A critical component of project monitoring and control is change management. As business requirements and operating environments change all the time, the project manager has to manage change throughout the software development cycle from acquisition,
supply, development, operation, and then maintenance. The guiding principles, techniques, and tools for change management are discussed in this chapter.
Automated Tools for Change Management
Documentation Tools
Word processing tools, such as WordPerfect, are rapidly being replaced with more sophisticated and intelligent products for document development and maintenance (see Table 18-3).
In the old days of the 1980s, word processors became sophisticated enough to support such functions as redlining, the identification of changes in documents by means of a vertical line drawn in the margin of the change area. Typical word processors that merely automate the document preparation, such as redlining, still require significant text manipulation and creation of multiple documents with redundant information. Newer tools are beginning to emerge in the workplace that will eventually become as important as word processing has been.
One drawback of serial, word-processed text is that ideas that interrelate to many different topics either have to be replicated or cross-referenced in some way. Hypertext software eliminates that need by allowing any number of associative relationships
to be defined for a given text item. Hypermedia extend hypertext to support audio, video, image, graphics, text, and data. In hypermedia, these multiple technologies may all be interrelated and coresident in one environment. In addition, because these
tools do not restrict the number of connections an item may have, and because they use mainstream computer technology, application documentation remains on-line and interactively available to all users. Of course, interactive availability also implies
a need for hyperlibrary management to control changes to library contents.
TABLE 18-3 Documentation Maintenance Tools
Tool |
Vendor |
Functions |
Folio Views |
Folio Provo, UT |
Works with Word Perfect to provide multimedia support, highlighting and post-it type document annotation. |
Hypertext™ |
Apple Computer Cupertino, CA |
Associative management of text and graphics |
MS/Word |
Microsoft, Inc. Belleview, WA |
Word processing |
Word Perfect and Word Perfect Mac with Grammatik |
Word Perfect Corp. Orem, UT |
Word processing plus grammar checking |
Words and Beyond |
Lundeen and Associates Alameda, CA |
Documentation production including text and graphics |