Application Lifecycle Management (ALM)

Posted on by thienduc

What is application lifecycle management (ALM)?

Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) is the strategic process of managing a software or product lifecycle from initial idea through design, development, testing, deployment, and end of life. ALM enables software engineering teams to efficiently collaborate on projects using proven Agile practices and trusted, up-to-date information. It is a foundational discipline for successful products, teams, and companies.

Why is ALM important?

Application lifecycle management helps teams manage the inherent complexity of modern software development. Today, product value is increasingly delivered through software. For example, the average automobile is composed of microprocessors running over 100 million lines of code. ALM connects people, processes, and tools to align teams around common goals, speed software delivery, and simplify regulatory compliance.

The benefits of application lifecycle management

Key areas of ALM

Governance

Establish a transparent, well-documented governance framework for software development. ALM enables organizations to establish transparent processes for decision-making and improve oversight and accountability of projects and software systems.

Application Development

Navigate the inherent complexity of modern, Agile software development. Today’s software engineers are vastly more productive than their predecessors of even a few years ago. This remarkable efficiency is delivered in the context of added complexity. By providing a single source of truth and end-to-end traceability for software development, covering requirements management, test management and project management, ALM makes modern software development possible.

Maintenance

It’s estimated that maintenance consumes 40-70% of the costs of the software lifecycle. Ongoing software maintenance is necessary to fix errors, maintain competitive parity, and respond to evolving customer needs. Application lifecycle management enables teams to efficiently track and manage changes and scheduled product releases over the lifetime of the product, enabling organizations to fulfill the promise of their product long after initial deployment.

 

Key ALM capabilities

Excellence in application lifecycle management requires mastery of the following:

Requirements Management: Gather market insights and business needs to direct software engineering and align team members around a common vision.
Software Development: Collaborate and automate to rapidly build quality software.
Quality Assurance and Testing: Validate and verify results at each lifecycle stage to improve outcomes and reduce cost of quality.
Agile Project Management: Adopt software engineering best practices that prioritize flexibility, collaboration, and continuous improvement.
DevOps: Create efficient, repeatable processes for successfully deploying and operating software. Plan and monitor software releases.
Risk Management: Identify, analyze, and mitigate internal and external threats by focusing on the most important subjects.
Software Design: Collaborate across disciplines to design innovative, quality software.
Collaboration: Provide seamless, transparent access to the latest project information and enable remote and parallel workstreams.
Regulatory Compliance: Adhere to regulatory standards for software development governance.
Analytics: Gain insights into software quality, usage, and team velocity to continuously improve software engineering process and predictability.
Source Code Management: Integrate with code editing tools to track and manage changes and easily associate source code to requirements, risks, and test data.

 

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