What is application lifecycle management?

Application lifecycle management (ALM) governs and controls activities across the application lifecycle to improve quality and ensure the application delivers expected business value. ALM is a broader perspective of the software development life cycle (SDLC), in that it oversees the entire application lifecycle beyond development, and the cycle from requirements to coding/testing and release/production repeats until the application reaches its retirement.

What are the components of ALM?

ALM and ALM tools manage the different steps of an application’s life.

Requirement management

At the start of an application’s life, the project manager, product owner, or scrum master (in an Agile context), in liaison with business managers, users, customers or clients, developers, and the QA team, captures and documents the software’s requirements.

Architecture and product design

When the requirements are clearly defined, product design takes over. No coding is involved at this stage, but a mistake in product design can have costly implications later in an application’s life.

Product coding and building

At this stage, the requirements and design are translated into programming code, where compilation, integration, and testing of the code are performed.

Product testing and quality assurance

This stage involves the confirmation that the application and its modules do what they are expected to do. This is repeated as many times as is needed to make the application ready for production.

Product release and deployment

Once the product is tested, it is ready for release. At this stage, the focus is on how to deploy the software to production environments in a controlled and efficient manner.

Operations and maintenance

After release, the focus is on monitoring the performance and availability of the deployed application and providing ongoing support and maintenance. Bugs may make it into production, and users may raise enhancement requests. An integrated service management tool is often used to facilitate resolving incidents and capturing user feedback.

Change management

As user needs evolve, product improvements will be needed. Change management processes are used to assess, prioritize, and implement changes to the software.

Product end of life

The product must be retired once the comparative cost of maintenance and improvement is too high to make financial sense. End of life management includes the migration of data to the successor application.

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What are the benefits of ALM?

ALM and ALM tools can deliver tangible advantages for your business.

Quicker time-to-market

The faster you can get a working product to users, the better. ALM helps accelerate the delivery of applications to market because it enables organizations to respond quickly to changing market dynamics, customer feedback, and competitive pressures while ensuring quality.

Higher quality products

Effective application lifecycle management delivers the best of both worlds; speed and quality. ALM emphasizes the importance of quality assurance, testing, and continuous improvement throughout the application lifecycle. It enables organizations to implement robust processes, identify defects early, and address software quality issues proactively.

Traceable compliance

Mechanisms for documenting, tracing, and auditing changes to software artifacts, enabling organizations to prove compliance and mitigate risks associated with software development and maintenance are all part of what ALM provides.

Comprehensive visibility

ALM gives visibility into the status, progress, and dependencies of software delivery activities. It enables stakeholders to have full visibility across the application’s lifecycle. With a proven ALM tool, you can tell in near real-time what requirements have been met, what has been tested, and what remains.

Streamlined processes and collaboration

ALM lets you implement a structured framework for managing the entire lifecycle of applications, from conception and requirements to development, testing, deployment, and maintenance. It helps streamline and standardize processes, reduce manual efforts, and improve overall efficiency. It eases collaboration and communication among cross-functional teams involved in software delivery.

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What is the evolution of ALM?

• Adoption of Agile and DevOps practices: The widespread adoption of Agile and DevOps methodologies has transformed how software is developed and managed. ALM has evolved to support these practices, enabling organizations to be more adaptive and automated in delivery software while enhancing cross-team collaboration.
• Shift towards cloud-based ALM solutions: Cloud-based ALM solutions provide organizations with the agility and scalability to manage software delivery and collaborate across distributed teams and geographies. Cloud-based ALM platforms offer benefits such as reduced infrastructure costs, increased accessibility, and easier maintenance.
• Use of artificial intelligence (AI): AI technologies are transforming ALM. AI (including GenAI) algorithms enable predictive analytics, anomaly detection, root cause analysis, human-like automation, and workflow optimization. ALM platforms with AI capabilities significantly improve productivity, reduce time-to-market, and enhance software quality and performance.
• Emphasis on compliance and governance: As regulatory requirements and compliance standards become more stringent, ALM has evolved to incorporate robust compliance and governance features. ALM tools can track changes, document audits, enforce policies, and ensure adherence to regulatory requirements such as GDPR, HIPAA, SOX, and GxP guidelines.

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Explore OpenText ALM solutions

The need for effective ALM tools cannot be overemphasized. A good tool can be a single source of truth that lays the groundwork for making intelligent, informed, and insightful decisions fast. Explore how our ALM solutions can help your business deliver quality applications with speed.

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