Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) is often wrongly thought to only cover only the Software Development Life cycle (SDLC). David Chappell’s excellent and concise whitepaper focuses on this misconception and explains how ALM is more than just the development of the application though that is certainly an important part of it.

ALM is broken down into the Governance, Development and Operations aspects. More importantly Chappell continues the point I had made briefly in my previous post - that there are ALM tools out there which are largely concentrated on the development aspect but their true value can be achieved by integrating them with tools that cover other aspects of ALM - eg: CRM.

To quote the whitepaper:

The three aspects of ALM—governance, development, and operations—are tightly connected to one another. Doing all three well is a requirement for any organization that aspires to maximize the business value of custom software. But this isn’t an easy goal to achieve. Each of the three is challenging to get
right on its own, and so getting the combination right is even more challenging. The right tools can make this easier. A number of vendors today provide tools that are horizontally integrated, i.e., tools that work together well on one of the three lines. For example, Microsoft’s Visual Studio Team System brings together a range of tools supporting several aspects of the development process. Yet tools should be integrated not just horizontally but vertically as well, helping organizations make connections across the three lines. For instance, project management tools should be connected to development tools, which in turn should have connections to the tools used for operations.

These connections are beginning to appear. Visual Studio Team System, for example, can connect with Microsoft’s Project Server to help project managers get up-to-date information on what developers are doing. There’s still plenty of room for improvement, however, and no vendor today offers a set of ALM tools with full vertical integration across all three lines. Tools should be integrated not just horizontally but vertically too.

Read the complete white paper here.

This entry was posted on Saturday, April 11th, 2009 at 1:42 pm and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.