ALM Tools and Techniques

Volume 9 - Number 3 - March 2011

ALM tools and techniques are essential for successfully creating software systems. ALM has expanded the focus of development methodologies to include a very wide scope. This month's CM Journal reflects this comprehensive and holistic approach that includes everything from requirements gathering to application deployment.

Carolyn Pampino starts us off with "Five Imperatives for Application Lifecycle Management" while Ben Weatherall gives us "Critical Mass in Our Time" while telling us that ALM is here to stay. Joe Farah explains that ALM tools are, well, somewhat futuristic in CM The Next Generation and Joe Townsend tells vendors to listen up.

Pablo Santos explains "Language-Aware SCM" and Mike Maciag presents "Automated Deployment and Dynamic Virtualization: Like Peanut Butter and Jelly "while Sky Basu makes a case for "ALM Middleware." I am in the game myself as I give a few of my own observations on ALM tools and techniques in Behaviorally Speaking. Make sure that you drop me a line and share your experiences with ALM Tools and Techniques!

Bob Aiello
Editor in Chief
CM Crossroads
raiello@acm.org

Featured articles...

Five Imperatives for Application Lifecycle Management by Carolyn Pampino Many organizations are faced with hastened delivery schedules due to competitive pressures and the need to innovate. Yet software development is difficult, and the software systems that are maintained and delivered by the world’s IT and device development organizations are astoundingly complex. Teams challenged by reduced time to delivery must do so without increasing their budgets or sacrificing quality. Their strategy, instead, must be to improve software development efficiency. A solution to this dilemma is to improve Lifecycle Collaboration with Application Lifecycle Management. Read More >>

Critical Mass in Our Time by Ben Weatherall ALM, or Application Lifecycle Management, is here to stay – at least until the marketing types come up with a new name for it. But there is a “Critical Mass” where time, as a resource, is the limiting factor on its implementation and growth. In its current form, ALM consists of a framework to do builds of one kind or another and stage them through deployment. It also provides a way of capturing electronic signatures for approvals and rejections at various procedural gates. There is generally some way of mapping procedural components to process ones as well and there are indications that Project Management functionality is, or shortly will, be incorporated into the higher-end ALM tools. For simplicity, I am ignoring DIET (Defect, Issue and Enhancement Tracking), separate integration with regression test systems, notification systems, deployment mechanisms, etc., though these too are important parts of the ALM solution. The three primary components of Version Control, Build Management and Packaging will be enough to illustrate my point. Read More >>

CM: THE NEXT GENERATION of ALM Tool by Joe Farah Next Generation ALM tools are, well, somewhat futuristic.  After all we're talking about the Next Generation.  But it's hard to talk about abstract and idealistic concepts if they are too hard to picture.  There are a number of tools out there that demonstrate clear 3G and 4G properties.  And new ALM Tools are emerging on several fronts.  Having written this column since mid-2004, I decided this would be a good time to show a bit more of the leading edge - a Next Generation ALM tool to reinforce the concepts of NG ALM.  I think it may affect the way you think about ALM tools.  It will also, hopefully, affect the way vendors think about their own tools, and especially about the future. Read More >>

More articles...

ALM Tools and Techniques: Listen up Vendors!!! by Joe Townsend I will go ahead and warn you now, if you are expecting to find out what tools offer are the best of breed this is not your article.  In this article I will spell out what we the CM/ALM community need in the tools that are being called ALM tools.  I will not discuss ALM techniques that will be covered in other articles in the CM Journal. Read More >> Language-Aware SCM by Pablo Santos Devops is a movement that is underway or at least in the very early stages of infancy as a way to rid the IT world of some if not most of its silo’s.  Silos have existed in Information Technology (IT) from the beginning for two reasons, the complex nature of early IT systems and because that’s the way businesses are run, for the most part.  Silo’s are an easy way for Accounting to make sense of business operations, for example, marketing only does marketing activities, sales does sales, distribution does distribution, etc.  So fast forward to today’s IT environment where Agile is taking hold and become more prevalent, where IT systems are becoming more complex, where news reaches the rest of the worlds in seconds not days or weeks.  Large scale failures and inefficiency is becoming not only way of life, in some people’s eyes it’s the norm in IT.  Devops is an attempt to correct this: Will it succeed?  Time will tell. Read More >>

Automated Deployment and Dynamic Virtualization: Like Peanut Butter and Jelly by Mike Maciag The Situation The benefits of automating software deployment processes are well known: efficiency, accuracy, security and an increase in productivity. But many organizations have stopped short of fully automating their deployment, especially in complex environments. What’s holding them back? They are either missing the automation to take advantage of their virtual infrastructure, not using a virtual infrastructure or only doing static virtualization. Automation and virtualization are like peanut butter and jelly: they’re better together. If you try to automate without virtualization, you’ll miss the advantages of very flexible resource management. Conversely, virtualization without automation leads to developers hoarding their virtual machines in the same way they did when they had physical machines, which results in simply replacing your server sprawl with VM sprawl. Read More >>

Making a Case for ALM Middleware by Sky Basu Integrated ALM today is also known as End-To-End ALM in some vendor literatures and websites. However, fulfilling this promise by various vendors using point-to-point integration architecture has been patchy at best. In this paper, we will focus on a new integration technology - ALM Middleware for achieving an Integrated ALM for a mixed vendor tools environment. Read More >> Behaviorally Speaking – ALM Tools and Techniques by Bob Aiello Defining the software development lifecycle (SDLC) is essential if you hope to have a repeatable and sustainable approach to creating large scale enterprise software systems. Years ago, we focused on defining an SDLC that was clear and practical. Application Lifecycle Management taken this effort to an entirely new level. ALM has both a wider focus and an implicit connection to effective tools to support the entire lifecycle. Your ALM should provide guidance for everything from defining requirements to application deployment (and even retiring assets that are no longer needed). Agile ALM defines just enough process to get the job done of course with an appropriate focus on rapid iterative development. Tools and effective techniques are essential in this effort. Read on if you want to be able to be successful in implementing ALM tools and techniques! Read More >>