I've recently been involved in a project in which Software Configuration Management has played a crucial role. However, I believe my skills in SCM are lacking.
What reading (books,articles, etc...) would you recommend on SCM Best Practices?
I'm not looking for books on SCM tools. I've already got that skill set covered :)
Source Control Howto is a classic from Eric Weblog (Eric Sink)
The chapter 7 of "Practical Perforce" (available online) on "how Software Evolves" is very interesting on the nature of branches.
The first is recommended for people who prefer to have a bird's eye view of all the processes that would constitute a SCM process. In fact, you'll find this discussed as the SCM pattern language in the book.
The second book, although not truly an SCM book in whole, is recommended since most of the best practices in SCM, have eventually made their way into CI. CI is incomplete without several basic constituents of a good SCM process - a version control repository, unit testing, integration builds, code policies etc.
SCM is a quite involved topic and in my experience fully utilised in large enterprises with very formalised processes (CMM level 4 as an example). Source control/branching/merging is just a small part of SCM. It is more important to know the concepts and processes. In one of my earlier companies where I worked the SCM was based on IEEE SWEBOK. I think this is still a good reference, SWEBOK Chapter 7
A great book for an SCM Manager and roadmap for the needs of the department can be found in Software Configuration Management Implementation Roadmap.