ALM is much more than just writing code. All three aspects—governance, development, and operations are important. Maximizing the value of the applications we create means doing all three aspects of ALM well. Achieving this goal isn’t easy, especially when today’s ALM tools aren’t as well integrated as they could be. Yet there’s no way around it: Taking a broad, holistic view of ALM is essential for improving this critical business process.
Figure 1: ALM can be viewed as having three aspects.
Like a human life, an application's lifecycle is demarcated by significant events. It begins with an idea: Why don't we build something that does this? Once the application is created, the next big event is deployment, when the application goes into production. And finally, when it no longer has business value, the application reaches end of life and is removed from service.
Governance, which encompasses all of the decision making and project Like a human life, an management for this application, extends over this entire time. Development, the process of actually creating the application, happens application's lifecycle first between idea and deployment. For most applications, the is demarcated by development process reappears again several more times in the application's lifetime, both for upgrades and for wholly new versions. significant events. Operations, the work required to run and manage the application, typically begins shortly before deployment, then runs continuously
2 until the application is removed from service. Each of these three areas is important, and so each is worth examining in more detail.
ASPECTS OF ALM: GOVERNANCE
In ALM, the purpose of governance is to make sure the application always provides what the business needs. Figure 2 gives a close-up view of ALM governance, providing a bit more detail on what it entails.
Figure 2: Governance extends over the entire application lifecycle.
The first step in ALM governance is business case development. As Figure 2 shows, this analysis happens before the development process begins. Once the business case is approved, application development starts, and governance is now implemented through project portfolio management. In some organizations, this is simple: A project manager might be attached to the development team, or one of the technical people on the team might take on this role. Other organizations use a more formal approach, relying on a centralized project management office (PMO) to enforce established procedures.
Once the completed application is deployed, it becomes part of the organization's portfolio of applications. An application is an asset like any other, and so the organization needs an ongoing understanding of its benefits and costs. Application portfolio management (APM) provides this, offering a way to avoid duplicating functions across different applications. APM also provides governance for the deployed application, addressing things such as when updates and larger revisions make business sense. In fact, examining the APM section of the Governance line in more detail would show that it contains business case development and project portfolio management for each of the revisions to the application shown on the Development line.
3 Governance is the only thing that extends throughout the entire ALM time span. In many ways, it's the most important aspect of ALM. Get it wrong, and you won't come close to maximizing the application's business value.
ASPECTS OF ALM: DEVELOPMENT
While equating ALM with the sof... [download for more]
