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Ease ALM With the Proper Tools
These tools will help you "do more with less."
by Nelson Ruest and Danielle Ruest
Posted October 15, 2003
The new trend in IT today is to "do more with less." This is one reason organizations are quickly learning that they have to gain better control of their networks if they want to reduce costs. One area where organizations can make significant cost reductions is Application Lifecycle Management (ALM). By managing the entire lifecycle instead of just the development portion, organizations can have more control of application development or software implementation projects.
The tools included in this roundup are designed to help you manage this process in a more complete manner. General lifecycle-management tools are followed by tools within each phase of lifecycle management.
General Lifecycle Management
AllFusion (Computer Associates International, Inc.)
AllFusion is a suite of three products whose purpose is the management of the complete application lifecycle. The first manages the application modeling process. It is designed to help organizations gain a better understanding of how features can best match business needs. This component is driven by CA's well-known ERwin Data Modeler (also see Design tools, below). The second product in the suite focuses on change and configuration management. It is designed to assist in the software change process, managing change requests while the development process is underway. The third manages processes and projects. But to truly manage a complete lifecycle, you will also need components of Computer Associates' UniCenter IT Resource Management suite.
Enterprise Studio for Java (Borland Software Corp.)
Borland's Enterprise Studio for Java includes seven tools. The first is the Together object modeling environment, letting you define and design your applications. The second is the JBuilder development environment, supporting the development process. JBuilder is also supported by the Borland Enterprise Server and JDataStore, an all-Java database. In addition, the suite includes Optimizeit, a performance analysis tool, as well as two additional tools: CaliberRM, which helps manage software requirements, and StarTeam, a software configuration management system. Integrated with native Java environments, this suite provides a fairly complete set of lifecycle management tools, especially if Java is your target platform.
Roundtable Total Software Management System (Tugboat Software)
If you are working with the Progress 4GL application development environment (ADE), Roundtable is the tool to support your application lifecycle. It provides complete development project management, letting you view the status of any development project at any time. Through its tight integration with both the Progress ADE and the Progress database, it can automate the application deployment process. It can also automate the application documentation process—it includes complete version control and can track any application modification. Roundtable can run in either a Windows or a Unix environment.
SourceCast (CollabNet)
SourceCast is an integrated environment that provides support for project management, the development process, information management throughout the project, and team communications. It can automate several of the testing phases, including the user-acceptance phase. SourceCast provides an easy-to-use Web interface that lets both business users and development teams interact during the application lifecycle. It also provides role-based management, simplifying the assignation of access rights and permissions during the development process. This is a good tool to help you create a more complete development environment.
IBM Rational Software (IBM Corp.)
Rational does not offer a single product for application life cycle management. Rather, all of their products are geared toward supporting different stages within the lifecycle. They are also designed to integrate with IDEs such as Microsoft Visual Studio .NET or IBM WebSphere Studio. Rational products support requirements definition and needs analysis through object modeling, and they can also automate testing and help improve performance. They support software configuration management, providing complete version control; they support the configuration of the software development process, making it easier for development teams to follow the development roadmap; and they can help support project management. Rational is well-known for the quality of its development support tools.
z/OS SCLM Suite (IBM Corp.)
For development in the System 390 world, IBM also provides the z/OS Software Configuration and Library Manager (SCLM) Suite, which consists of several tools. The first, Cloud 9, provides an integrated library for the management of diverse code components such as HTML, Java, and System 390 objects. The second, Breeze, is a review and approval tool that helps support the software quality assurance process. The third, Enhanced Access Control, lets you manage permissions and access rights for the software libraries. The fourth and final component, SCLM for z/OS, provides version control and software promotion from one environment to another, supporting each phase of the testing process. Together, the tools in the z/OS SCLM Suite provides solid help for the development and graduation components of the application lifecycle.
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