Thomas E. MurphyFor a long time, (a really long time) the term Application Life-cycle Management (ALM) has bothered me. Why, because what we typically call ALM tools are tools that govern the development and delivery of a software project and that is only part of the life-cycle of an application. To really be ALM you would need to talk about the portfolio of apps (APM) and the management of those assets from cradle to production to (a place more should probably get to sooner) the digital grave.
During AADI we held a roundtable on ALM Practices and had a fairly quick conversation on this topic. The nut of the conversation is that no-one in IT uses the term ALM. Either SDLC (software development life-cycle) or more specific terms: requirements management, project management, defect management, etc. are used. There is a slowly emerging convergence of APM and PPM tools with ALM and a convergence between ALM and Release Management in DevOps that at some point may deliver a real “ALM” suite or solution set but the reality at this point is we probably should modify our terminology to say ADLM. I would love to get your input either here or tweet me @metamurph
Category: ALM Tags:
3 responses so far ↓
1 Steve Denman December 8, 2011 at 12:04 pm
Great topic! I agree. So, what does the ‘D’ in ADLM represent? Development or Delivery? I ask because that could be a significant difference in scope. Thanks!
2 Matt Klassen December 8, 2011 at 12:37 pm
I do agree with your analysis, and have been contemplating this topic since I invented it (this is a joke, my name is not Al Gore
). Not to make this more complicated on purpose, but there is one facet you have left out of this discussion, the A in ALM stands for application and there is a rapidly growing segment in software that does not build applications…they build software embedded in devices. The prospective “ALM” users in this segment are not IT professionals, but engineers. It turns out their needs overlap with application developers significantly, although they do have some specific needs that go beyond typical IT development projects (SPL, Compliance, PLM Integration).
So, should we change the A to an S? It seems that the term software covers both IT applications and software embedded in products. The D should then be for development, not delivery, IMO.
SDLM – It has a nice ring to it and fits perfectly with SDLC.
3 KMoraz January 31, 2012 at 3:22 pm
Problem is, breaking the TLA rule is not very good for marketing… TFS sounds better than VSTS, right?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-letter_acronym
Leave a Comment