Application lifecycle management
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Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) is a continuous process of managing the life of an application through governance, development and maintenance. ALM is the marriage of business management to software engineering made possible by tools that facilitate and integrate requirements management, architecture, coding, testing, tracking, and release management.[1][2]
Benefits
Proponents of application lifecycle management claim that it:
- Increases productivity, as the team shares best practices for development and deployment, and developers need focus only on current business requirements.
- Improves quality, so the final application meets the needs and expectations of users.
- Breaks boundaries through collaboration and smooth information flow.
- Accelerates development through simplified integration.[3]
- Cuts maintenance time by synchronizing application and design.
- Maximizes investments in skills, processes, and technologies.
- Increases flexibility by reducing the time it takes to build and adapt applications that support new business initiatives.
- All-in-one ALM solutions are expected to be more cost effective.[4]
Disadvantages
Opponents of application lifecycle management claim that it:
- Increases an application's whole-life cost.
- Increases vendor lock-in.
- Single point of failure.
Categories of ALM tools
- Requirements analysis
- Requirements management
- Feature management
- Modeling
- Design
- Project management
- Change management
- Configuration management
- Software information management (for ALM tool integration)
- Build management
- Software configuration management
- Software testing
- Release management
- Software deployment
- Issue management
- Monitoring and reporting
- Workflow
- Open source license management
As the Integrated Development Environment (IDE) continues to evolve, tool vendors are increasingly integrating their products to deliver suites. IDEs are giving way to tools that reach outside of pure coding and into the architectural, deployment, and management phases of the application lifecycle, providing full Application Lifecycle Management. The hallmark of these suites is a common user interface, meta model, and process engine that also enable ALM team members to communicate using standards-based architectures and technologies such as Unified Modeling Language (UML).[citation needed]
Products
Notable products include:
Open source alternatives
| Name | Sponsor |
|---|---|
| Endeavour Agile ALM | Community driven |
| OSEE | Community, Boeing, Eclipse Foundation |
| Mylyn | Community, Eclipse Foundation |
| TopCased ALM | Community, AirBus Consortium, Ministére de La Défense, Ministére de l'Economie des Finances et de l'Industrie, L'Agence Nationale de le Recherche, Region Mid Pyrinees |
See also
- Business transaction management
- Product lifecycle management
- Application Lifecycle Framework
- Systems development life-cycle
- Open Services for Lifecycle Collaboration
References
- ^ deJong, Jennifer (2008-04-15). "Mea culpa, ALM toolmakers say". SDTimes. Retrieved 2008-11-22.
- ^ Chappell, David, What is Application Lifecycle Management? (PDF)
- ^ http://www.gather.com/viewArticle.action?articleId=281474978848396
- ^ ALM Tools - All in One Solutions versus Point Solutions (PDF)
Further reading
- Keuper, Frank; Oecking, Christian; Degenhardt, Andreas; Verlag, Gabler (2011). Application Management: Challenges - Service Creation - Strategies. ISBN 978-3-8349-1667-9.
- Linnartz, Walter; Kohlhoff, Barbara; Heck, Gertrud; Schmidt, Benedikt (2004). Application Management Services und Support. Publicis Corporate Publishing. ISBN 3-89578-224-6.
- "Gartner Market Scope for ALM 2010".
- Hüttermann, Michael (2011). Agile Application Lifecycle Management. Manning. ISBN 9781935182634.
