What is Application Lifecycle Management (ALM)?
In the article, Eileen describes ALM as being a specialized subset of project management that is devoted to delivering software projects vs. project management in general. We agree with Eileen and in fact our vision of ALM is that it is the entire set of tools and processes, covering the capture and management of requirements, the project management, infrastructure and quality assurance necessary to support and drive the software development lifecycle.
ALM tools provide a standardized environment for communication and collaboration between software development teams and related departments, such as test and operations. They also automate the process of software development and delivery.
The article includes this handy reference model for ALM:
SpiraTeam ALM
We are honored that SoftwareAdvice have chosen SpiraTeam from the entire space of ALM tools to be in their top-three along with other leading tools such as Jira and VersionOne. We feel that is a testament to the functionality and ease of use that is provided by the SpiraTeam v5 platform.
As mentioned in the article,there are three products that make up our “Spira” brand. Each product targets a different set of user needs:
- SpiraTest: Requirements, defect and issue management
- SpiraPlan: Robust agile PM (supports both scrum and kanban methodologies)
- SpiraTeam: Integrated ALM solution, containing all the features and capabilities found in the other two products: SpiraTest + SpiraPlan = SpiraTeam
Their advice to customers looking for an ALM solution from Inflectra is:
SMB teams looking for a full-service ALM solution would be best served by SpiraTeam. However, for teams not quite ready to institutionalize ALM practices, SpiraPlan can be a stepping stone to help them scale their processes toward product portfolio management.
We agree with that advice and advocate that customers looking to solve their testing and quality assurance challenges first should consider adopting SpiraTest and then graduating to SpiraTeam, whereas companies looking primarily for a planning / management tool start with SpiraPlan before scaling up to SpiraTeam.
SpiraPlan for Scrum
In addition, SoftwareAdvice has included SpiraPlan in its in-depth article describing recommended tools for agile project management using the Scrum methodology. The article highlights five common Scrum project management tools that can help agile teams structure and improve their workflows.
Further Reading
- http://www.softwareadvice.com/resources/application-lifecycle-management-tools/
- http://www.softwareadvice.com/resources/project-management-scrum-tools/
- http://www.softwareadvice.com/project-management/spiraplan-profile/