Software Configuration Management is the discipline of controlling the evolution of complex systems [Tychy88]. Most of current commercial Software Configuration Managers (SCM) propose a unique pre-defined policy for the management of software Process is highly evolutive; it must be adapted to each organization (its own policies and constraints) and evolve in parallel with changes in the organization.

This paper presents the integration of active capabilities in a SCM as a solution to this problem. The use of a triggering mechanism, to implement these active capabilities, shows that it is possible to model and support a wide range of software management strategies. Therefore, the system is highly adaptable and can be customized to users specific needs. 

This work has been realized in the Adele 1 configuration Manager. The Adele data model is an object-association, the object represent software components and the associations are relationships between them. Both are stored in a multi-user and multi-version repository. The Trigger mechanism is not only used for integrity enforcement of data, but also, to support the definition, execution and control of software management policies.