Understanding the Functionalities and Benefits of an Integrated ALM
Technologies are bringing in manifold advantages of Integrated ALM to real development as they are maturing in vital production systems. Application development enterprises invest a lot of money on different siloed point function tools that includes requirement management, architecture, coding, build, testing, tracking, release management and more. Being the most sought-after aspects of software development process, integrated ALM tool has a number of compelling benefits. And, if an organization is not thinking about an integrated ALM, it is certainly missing out on these benefits.
A cost-effective, flexible and user-friendly integrated ALM eliminates complex and costly integration tools, and surmounts the limitations of the existing point-to-point and single-vendor tools integrations. An integrated ALM has immense significance, and its functionalities and benefits include:
1. Improved insight
There are often problems of visibility in the enterprise as far as day-to-day activities in application development are concerned. With an integrated and connected ecosystem of tools, every individual, team and organization gains greater insight into the application development and aids them to do their job much better in an informed way. This way there is a certainty of total visibility into projects, people, costs and items.
2. Executing best practices
Devoid of interconnected set of tools including requirements management tool, it is almost impossible to integrate different engineering processes carried out in different practitioner tools. While paper based processes are used to control handoffs between functional areas, with integrated engineering process the hand offs can be done automatically. This is due to its inherent method of communication, synchronization and feedback between stage level processes which is indispensable for a successful application development.
3. The finest global distributed development
With application lifecycle development becoming more global, projects are involving the working of a huge number of teams from different locations. Enterprises are often faced with situations where for the same lifecycle domain there are people working in different countries. Although participating in application development, there is a need to accommodate and adjust to different culture and tools. With an integrated ALM it is possible to remain connected in such a way that ensures no duplication of work, no decrease in productivity, and all cross-culture miscommunication is minimized.
Integration business rules change over time for reasons such as the ever evolving business conditions, group dynamics, and development methodologies. With an ability to integrate multiple tools on the bus for the entire development & IT Lifecycle, an efficient application lifecycle management solution supports a comprehensive and user-friendly Web interface.