White Paper - ALM and

Integrated ALM

By Kovair Marketing

US Corporate Office India Registered Office Bangalore Office

Kovair Software, Inc. Kovair Software Pvt. Ltd. Kovair Software Pvt. Ltd.
2603 Camino Ramon, STE 200, PTI Building, 6th Floor, DP-9, Samad House, #402, 4th B cross,
San Ramon, CA 94583, Sector – V, Salt Lake City, 7th A Main, HRBR Layout, Kalyan
United States Kolkata - 700091, India Nagar, Bangalore- 560043, India
Tel: 1.408.262.0200 Extn.1 Tel: 91-33-4065 7016/17/18/19 Tel: +91-95350 92589
Email: [email protected] Email: [email protected] Email: [email protected]
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Table of Contents

What is Application Lifecycle Management? ........................................................................................................... 3

ALM is Different from SDLC ...................................................................................................................................... 4
How to Implement ALM............................................................................................................................................. 4
The Bottom Line ...................................................................................................................................................... 4
What is Integrated ALM? ............................................................................................................................................... 5
Why Integrate ALM Tools and Processes?............................................................................................................ 5
How does Integrated ALM Add Value? ................................................................................................................. 5
What are the Challenges of Integrated ALM? ..................................................................................................... 6
What are the Approaches for Integrated ALM? .................................................................................................. 6
The Bottom Line ........................................................................................................................................................... 7
About Kovair ...................................................................................................................................................................... 8

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What is Application Lifecycle

Management?
Application lifecycle management - ALM is the process of managing software applications from their
initial planning through retirement i.e. from business idea generation to when the application no
longer has any business value, and is removed from service. An application’s lifecycle includes the
entire time span during which an organization spends money on this asset.

The process of managing application’s lifecycle can be divided into three distinct areas - governance,
development, and operations.

 Governance encompasses all of the decision making and project management steps which
extends throughout an applications’ lifecycle.
 Development, the actual creation of application occurs between idea and deployment stage
and may require several SDLC efforts depending on the iterations made in Requirements
definition, design, coding, and testing phases mainly due to product upgrade or launch of
wholly new versions.
 Operations start shortly before deployment and involve running, monitoring and maintaining
of the application for the rest of its life.

Fig: The Three Aspects of Application Lifecycle Management - ALM

To summarize, ALM is a set of pre-defined processes that start somewhere in the business as an idea,
a need, a challenge or a risk and then pass through different development phases such as

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Requirements definition, design, development, testing, deployment, release and maintenance

spanning across an entire lifecycle of a product. Throughout the ALM process, each of these steps is
closely monitored and controlled, followed by proper tracking and documentation of any changes to
the application.

ALM is Different from SDLC

ALM is much more than SDLC. Software Development Life Cycle – SDLC, as we all know it is limited
to the phases of software development, i.e. requirements, design, coding, testing, configuration and
project management. ALM, on the other hand, deals with a broader perspective of applications. It
does not finish at the end of development, but when the application is no longer used by the
business i.e. primarily many years after the initial development. To simplify, ALM is the superset
which includes one or more SDLCs that may appear in the entire lifecycle.

How to Implement ALM

As the three aspects of ALM – Governance, Development and Operations are the indispensable parts
of any application, they need to be connected to each other to maximize business value of software.
Having the right combination of tools and processes along with a streamlined workflow can make
the job easier.

There are a number of vendors and open source groups who provide tools to manage each of the
ALM phases. Some vendors bring together a range of tools to support several aspects of ALM.
However, ALM tools should be integrated not only horizontally, but also vertically so that
connections can be established among cross-functional tools involved in the process, and therefore,
the three distinct ALM phases can be performed well.

The Bottom Line

Any organization that wants to adapt to quickly changing requirements of customers and develop
scalable and high-quality business applications on time at lower cost needs to set up an ALM
framework around its teams and tools. One should take a broad and holistic view of ALM beyond
SDLC steps, as that is mission critical to developing any business application.

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What is Integrated ALM?

Integrated Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) is a totally integrated set of tools and processes
that help organizations manage the complete lifecycle of an application development. It connects
different teams, activities, platforms, tools, and processes.

Why Integrate ALM Tools and Processes?

Organizations often spend millions in individual software development tools for managing
Requirements, Projects, Portfolios, Software designs, Development, Testing, Deployment, Release and
other functional areas. However, these tools are not connected to each other, and therefore, lead to
cumbersome manual procedures while synchronizing data or processes between them. The situation
worsens if teams working on those tools are geographically isolated and on different time zones.

It is important that enterprises employ an integrated suite of tools that keeps team members in sync
with each other. This ensures a greater degree of collaboration among cross-functional teams
followed by better quality application and faster delivery.

How does Integrated ALM Add Value?

 Overcomes challenges of globally distributed development - keeps all stakeholders

synchronized
 Ensures seamless collaboration among ALM tools behind firewalls across diverse networks
 Manages projects and resources across the tools, breaking down organizational silos
 Helps monitoring exact status of different teams working on different areas of a project
 Maintains a centralized and single data repository for multiple ALM phases and artifacts
 Provides ALM tools interoperability, cross-repository linking and transparency across
organizations
 Establishes end-to-end traceability of artifacts from within users’ preferred tool environment
 Automates lifecycle processes cutting across tool boundaries
 Reduces manual hand-offs between teams and tools mitigating chances of human error
 Saves time and cost in managing complex, multifarious projects
 Enforces best practice processes across best-of-breed tools. No compromise on tool selection
and its operability
 Ensures code quality and performance throughout the lifecycle processes

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 Helps Managers gain greater insight into project anytime, anywhere

 Provides real-time actionable metrics to take corrective measures
 Ensures zero-error and zero-loss data synchronization between tools

What are the Challenges of Integrated ALM?

Introducing and implementing Integrated ALM in development organizations is not easy for
following reasons:

a) Multi-vendor tools use various technologies such as command line interface, desktop
application, client-server, or web based that run on different platforms such as Windows,
Linux, and UNIX.
b) Software being produced uses a wide range of technologies such as .NET based desktop
application, Java based web application, or a COBOL based mainframe application.
c) Tools use various data repositories such as proprietary file structures, XML, Excel, or
relational databases of various flavors.
d) Tools are geographically distributed as the development groups and team members from
multiple corporate entities are.

What are the Approaches for Integrated ALM?

Considering the fact that leading ALM vendors are trying to build Integrated ALM platform around
their clients’ tool environment, their approaches differ significantly. Following are the three major
approaches, their limitations and advantages.

Approach #1: Point-to-point Integrated Multi-Vendor Tools

Limitations: Complexity of tool combinations, Handcrafted business integration rules, and

replacement dilemma

Approach #2: Single Vendor Integrated ALM Tools

Limitations: Compromise in tool usage, Rip and Replace for existing tools, One size fits all,
Technology Islands of development

Approach #3: Multi-vendor best-of-breed Integrated ALM Tools by ESB based Integration
Hub

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Advantages: No limitations of Approach #1 and Approach #2, Better tool accessibility and
configurability, Future tool enhancements, Seamless integration flow, Lightweight integration, Open
messaging models, Easy plug-in and plug-out integration service in SOA framework

Fig: ESB Based ALM Middleware for Integrated ALM

ESB based ALM integration platform does away with complex and costly integrations, overcoming
the limitations of point-to-point and single vendor tools integration. It not only increases
connectivity and adds flexibility to gain better control of the applications, but also provides a user
with codeless configuration facility.

The Bottom Line

Availability, Performance, Scalability, Security, Manageability and Maintainability - organizations need
to consider all major aspects of Integrated ALM before choosing a vendor who can maximize ROI
from the existing or new ALM tool investments. Anything less than will not make an ALM framework
in real measure.

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About Kovair
Kovair Software is a Silicon Valley based software product company specializing in the domain of
Integrated Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) solutions and supports global software
development and management. Kovair’s focus on integrating third party best-of-breed ALM tools
enables creation of applications in a synchronized tools environment.

Kovair has partnered with leading technology brands like Microsoft, IBM, CA, BMC and more to
provide customers a wide range of integration solutions.

Product Portfolio: Kovair’s flagship products Omnibus Integration Platform, ALM Studio,
QuickSync and Integrated DevOps are highly preferred solutions by some of the major corporations
globally.

Recognitions: The SD Times 100 has recognized Kovair as one of the top 100 software
innovators in the domain of Application Lifecycle Management. Kovair’s Innovations in ALM Tools
and ALM Integrations are well recognized both in the industry and by analysts at places like Gartner
and Forrester.

Business Focus: Application Lifecycle Management Products and Services, Integration Platform

Industry Verticals: IT Consulting and Services, Banking and Financial Services, Telecom,
Manufacturing, Networking, Healthcare, Defense and Government.

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© 2017, Kovair Software, Inc. All Rights Reserved. The Integrated ALM Company.
www.kovair.com | Email: [email protected] | ALM and Integrated ALM