Sharing my experience as an Adobe consultant
One of the suggestions I usually did when I worked with a new client was to track the s_code version. Now that we are moving to DTM, we do not have any more the concept of the s_code, but we have the concept of publishing new rules, which is similar to an s_code version. The idea is to keep a value in a prop, which is changed every time a new s_code is pushed live or a new set of rules is published. My typical suggestion is to add both a date and a version to the string.
Back in the old days, the only way to add Web analytics code to a website, was through manual coding. If you were using Adobe Analytics, you would need to add two pieces of code into the website: the s_code and the on-page code. The s_code is a JavaScript file with common code for Adobe Analytics (SiteCatalyst) and the on-page code contains the page-specific data.