Hardware Reference
In-Depth Information
Fig. 4. Principal elements of Application Lifecycle Management
6 Conclusions
This paper presents the experiences of ALM improvement in an automation company.
The improvement of Application Lifecycle Management in a case company has been
iterative. The paper reports the history, current state and experiences from the im-
provement effort. The common feature that characterises product development in a
company is the global development environment. Globalisation has been the main
reason that has forced a company to seek more effective solutions to support product
development. For two SW teams, the case company started to pilot the ALM solution
to support global SW development with the agile development method, Scrum. The
teams ended up with quite different ALM solutions based on their special needs for
product development and management. One team ended up with a Notes-dominant
ALM solution, whereas the other with a TFS-dominant solution.
The following list presents the summary of experiences about ALM improvement
from a company producing complex multi-discipline products:
Interfaces with system level product information management tools affect
SW project's ALM solution (company/organisation constraints for SW
project). In this case, lead to the use of several databases. Inter-project
product information management practices and solutions need to be col-
lectively agreed and compatible between development projects.
A single central ALM tool was found feasible when there were not many
relations to organization's other information management systems. Cen-
tral database allowed the whole SW team to have a consistent view of pro-
ject data.
The integration of different technologies is still difficult. Therefore, it is
more feasible to focus on certain technology and build the solution around
it (e.g. TFS or Notes).
Teams had specific needs for ALM that lead to different solutions. Itera-
tive improvement of ALM practices and solutions produced feasible solu-
tions for each team.
In practice, ALM solution can be a central database or the collection of
databases. In the case of several databases, the interoperability of data-
bases is essential to maintain the consistency of product information (e.g.
tight integration or loosely coupled integration with proper process).
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