All organizations must implement a good Change management process (CMP). A good CMP will define how changes are received, recorded, tracked, executed and delivered. CVS provides version control for your project. Change management addresses the “bigger picture” of how enhancements and bugs are received, tracked and closed. CVS will play a smaller but a very important part in this entire picture. With a formal change management process in place in the organization, tools such as CVS will be looked at as aiding this process instead of acting as a general development overhead.

Change management is quite a vast topic that cannot be done justice here. Please look up other sources of information on change management.

To institutionalize CVS, it can be made as part of the performance objectives for the developer to use CVS in the project. In addition, it can also be made as part of the objective for the project manager to deploy CVS in his or her project.

Compliance of this can then be reviewed as part of the appraisal cycle for the employee.

CVS usage metrics can be collected in terms of percentage of deployment in the organization, project size handled etc., This information will spur other line managers and program managers to look at CVS as a tool that will aid them in their daily operations.