On Taking a Configuration Management Position?

Bravo_Two_Zero asks: "I've recently been offered a Configuration Management position as a lateral (with a slight incline) move. I'm darn happy as an admin, and my heart really lies with system engineering rather than the more mundane operational concerns. But, the position is new, so I would have a chance to define many parameters. Also, it could lead to a management opportunity (if I'm interested) much faster than my current admin slot. It's a hideously complex environment, but I already live through that as an admin. Mileage will vary widely, I know, but I was hoping there might be a school of thought or two from some devoted Slashdot readers who perform or have performed the position. What did you do, and what would you change? And, to the broader audience, is this something you think of as a growth field, or is this just another layer of administrivia foisted on us by an unrealistic development model? Is there a book or other resource that professional Configuration Managers consider a must-read?"

Comments

Proliferation of Options

[jfdawes]

There's so many different development environments, servers, languages, libraries, protocols and file formats out there (and more every day) that any project is likely to run into several new ones.

A huge problem with most of the newer ones is that they are half baked. When you run into a problem you can take days to sort it out: There's little documentation and what there is does not go into any depth, no-one is talking about it and if they are they most likely saying "I've got this problem no-one knows anything about, help"

In this sort of environment, a good configuration manager could be priceless.

(Come to think of it, I keep running into this Java configuration problem with WebSphere: log4j and struts want to use different, incompatible versions of commons-logging. Any ideas?)