Relating SCM Patterns to SCM Principles

Our August Agile SCM column in the CM Journal is about Relating SCM Patterns to SCM Principles. The article is pretty flimsy, barely a skeleton, and that's pretty much entirely my my fault. I meant to write more "meat" about how certain principles are the underlying forces behind several patterns. I wanted to show how the principles are strongly related, much the same way patterns in a pattern language are related. And I wanted to show how that structure shaped the relationships between the patterns as well. Rob did a really good job trying to put together what I had with what he could come up with, but I didn't really give him enough and couldn't easily convey it in a way that made it easy for him to "run with it!"

It's not that I don't see those relationships, I do. And I'm not lacking for words to describe them either. I'm having trouble describing them clearly and concisely. A big part of that is because I still don't like the names of the SCM Principles as I've described them so far. Their names currently relate to the OOD Principles they were derived from. I think that might speak to programmers, but not to folks trying to do version control (even if they also wear "developer" hats). I really want to go back and rework the names of the principles to be more simple and direct.

This is something Ive been working in my mind on and off for alkmost a decade now. To me, it is of profound important - perhaps even the most significant contribution I'll have made to the field of SCM to date. THe interest level doesn't seem to be so high on the scm-patterns list and the cmcrossroads.com forums (but that hasn't deterred me - yet :). I really do think it's not a coincidence that principles of object-oriented design also manifest themselves as fundamental principles of SCM solution design (because I think both are all about architecture - and minimizing and managing dependencies).

I'd really like feedback. On this stuff so if you've had a chance to read thru the June, July and August Agile CM columns, I'm going to create a new YahooGroup about Agile-CM for discussing these and other Agile CM issues. Hopefully this new agile-cm group will have a healthy balance of both SCM folks and Agile development folks so we can have some constructive multi-faceted discussions.