Why Do Some Mature Organizations Not Use Mature CM Tools?

This paper presents a case-study of a Configuration Management (CM) tool evaluation. The evaluation was performed in a company with a long tradition of using CM tools. Although several generations of CM tools have been developed internally, different reasons led to a decision not to use CM tools internally developed but to buy a tool available on the market. A detailed evaluation was performed on the basis of the company's experience. The investigation procedure, the criteria for the evaluation, and the results are presented in the paper. The results of the evaluation, taken to the final selection of a tool, have shown the superiority of one tool, but another tool, considerably inferior to the first has been chosen. Why? This paper analyses the background of the decision and points out the factors, not always of a technical nature, which significantly influence d the decision, and which are sometimes forgotten by the tool suppliers.