Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) is a complete lifecycle of a software application intended to help in business management.
ALM maintains the processing of a software application starting from its requirement to its framework, development, testing, resolving issues, and deployment while improving software quality and developer productivity.
ALM helps deliver releases on time without sacrificing quality. Unlike SDLC that covers the development stage only, ALM manages the entire lifecycle and hence is comprehensive.
An integrated system of tools and processes that administer the life of an application starting from conception to it being obsolete.
Every ALM tool is designed to be benefited in one, or other forms as every organization’s requirements vary and thus may benefit from ALM tools differently. There are three primary ALM methodologies:
- Agile Approach
- Waterfall Method
- Spiral/Hybrid Method (Waterfall-Hybrid Solution)
Top 7 Benefits of Application Lifecycle Management
Helps Businesses in Preparing & Organizing
Start your project with an organized plan and assessment according to the requirements. From the point a demand rises, it initiates defining your business needs and selects optimal solutions accordingly.
ALM software helps in project management by resource planning. Specific tools are available for different requirements, which could be for traditional waterfall projects, or agile development projects, or both.
Multiple Teams Collaboration
For companies, especially the ones in multiple locations, it is essential to have an uncomplicated and robust network and management for collaboration between different teams.
ALM software makes sure that everyone involved in the SD process has a complete and real-time track of strategies, changes, requirements, and status for the project.
ALM software helps in defining what type of skill sets would be perfect for a specific process, and how to prioritize goals, for the whole team.
Better Speed, Quality and Compliance
With processes and tools integrated and shared with every team, the time wasted on the otherwise disconnected closed loops of channels enhances communication and speed while reinforcing the quality of the system and software.
So, with appropriately defined and integrated tools, ALM ensures to deliver end-user needs built with the highest quality standards.
An ALM system helps you with an audit trail by creating a traceability matrix while developing. The process ensures your product run is up-to-date, and compliance is provided throughout its lifecycle.
Throughout the application governance, development, and operations, ALM tools make sure to find the best-suited method with a strategic business outcome.
ALM integrates people & processes for a favorable outcome and helps in deciding 'which, what, and when' of each level.
It determines resources, skills, methodology with set priorities and goals.
ALM thus assists the businesses to the best route which needs to be taken for a particular task from scratch to finish.
One latent, but a much-needed aspect while managing a big team, is that an individual employee’s unbiased work productivity, contribution, quality, and progress report needs to be tracked and monitored.
Not just dividing and assigning the work is crucial. It's also critical to have transparency of every step and visible input of each individual or tools participating in the process.
That contributes to attaining and mitigating the deployment stage on time without any quality loss.
An ALM process solution provides you with an end to end application development & testing platform.
A software or an app development requires a reliable intercommunication for development and testing, resulting in the timely identification of an issue and finding a quick and appropriate solution for the same.
During the process of software development, it's crucial to have a fully automated and reliable build that runs multiple testing each day systematically.
This eliminates integration problems by allowing developers to consolidate their work without creating any drawbacks.
Employee Support & Customer Satisfaction
In ALM, maintenance and support is an integral part of the solution. Also, according to the customer’s changing business requirements, the ALM solution integrates, adapts, and supports the right applications.
With this said, application lifecycle management helps in faster releases, delivering customers satisfaction.
Individual project contribution and support provided by the ALM tools support in balancing employee requirements and business goals.
Top 5 Application Lifecycle Management Software in brief:
Atlassian’s ALM solution provides powerful and customizable workflows for both methodologies; Agile and Waterfall with an open-source bug tracking and agile project management tool “Jira” that itself supports scrum and kanban methodologies.
SpiraTeam is a combination of two individual products by Inflectra, namely SpiraTest and SpiraPlan.
This means SpiraTeam contains all the capabilities, including issues and agile project management, with both methodologies (scrum and kanban) support.
Micro Focus has an easy to integrate, stable, and scalable application lifecycle management solution with comprehensive platform capabilities and real-time continuous delivery pipeline.
It has mobile support and can be installed on-premises or through the SaaS cloud model, and incorporates Micro Focus Fortify Software Security.
Helix ALM Suite by Perforce includes test case management and integrated source code management with other vital features.
Helix is a customizable single application solution that lets you simplify the process by allowing you to choose the specific tools and thus eradicates superfluous options.
CollabNet (software development & DevOps solutions) and VersionOne (agile software solutions & services) ALM solutions announced their merger in 2017.
Altogether, CollabNet VersionOne provides better collaboration, visibility, agile portfolio management, idea management, support & metrics with many other solutions.
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