There is no involvement of the business with software development and no visibility into its activity – effectively a black box to business managers. Also, with no accepted body of knowledge in managing people developing software, managers often end up learning what works best the hard way.
Applications exist in the organization in multiple ways: through custom development and enhancement projects, purchased Commercial Off-The-Shelf (COTS) products, subscription applications from service providers, modules or whole applications provided through outsourcing, and legacy applications. These are valuable IT assets and ALM helps to manage them all, delivering business value, says Michael Azoff, Senior Research Analyst with Butler Group and author of the study. ALM can be used as a means of inverting the traditional view of IT as a cost centre and changing it to one of value generator. However, while technology has leapt ahead, project sociology has not kept pace.
Lack of good practice within IT
Unlike COTS products, enterprise applications never ‘finish’. A successful application will lead to enhancement requests and on-going maintenance. These post-deployment costs, including support, represent as much as 80% of overall lifecycle costs, but developers rarely take enhancements and maintenance into account in their decision-making.
Within IT, there is a lack of good practice, particularly with regard to using the right tools for the job. Senior corporate management skimp on tool resources but spend huge amounts on manpower, particularly contract and outsourced work. The opportunity to exploit automation and reduce the need for labour intensive work is not realised.
Management also has difficulty in making the right choices on platform technologies, so that they best fit the business mission. All too often such decisions are left to low-level decision making, such as at the developer level, which can run counter to the long-term viability of the application.
According to Butler Group, the management of an application lifecycle as opposed to its development concerns much broader issues than those of project process and methodology. This, says the report, is where the concept of ALM is so important. Modern ALM suites have the greatest potential to deal with these issues.
ALM to change perception of IT
The concept of ALM has evolved in a number of ways. From a management viewpoint it now encompasses a broader range of activities, from first stage business case requirements to operational performance issues in the production environment.
Making IT development visible to higher business management is another benefit of new generation ALM. ALM, when combined with management processes such as Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMi) and PRINCE2*, ensure that communication between business and the IT department is improved. IT also gains from better understanding the needs of the business.
While the concept of ALM is as old as the mainframe, the key is that ALM is increasingly being made available as an integrated suite of interoperable tools. In this sense the ALM suite is evolving from the Integrated Development Environment (IDE) toolset. Used correctly, Butler Group believes ALM tools can help deliver faster-to-market, high quality software products.
In Butler Group’s view, the chief tools now available in ALM that can provide business intelligence on application delivery include Project Portfolio Management, Requirements Management, and Application Performance Management. The addition of these three activities to traditional lifecycle development provides a necessary and hitherto missing business perspective.
However, tools should not be used as a defense mechanism against dealing with difficult software development issues, otherwise the developers will bypass the tools and the same old problems will re-surface.
There needs to be a better understanding by business of the nature of software development and its practitioners, and vice versa, software developers need to understand the impact their solutions have on the business. Communication is the key to bridging the cultural divide between IT and business. Used intelligently ALM tools and better people management can lead to that elusive project success.
