Many enterprises use multiple development tools to manage the ever increasing complexity of software development. Most of these tools are very specific in nature and focus to solve a single problem during a particular phase of the development Lifecycle. However well these individual tools do their specific jobs, enterprises nevertheless face serious challenges to deliver the software with a required quality, within time and budget and with high acceptance from the user community. These challenges include defining, implementing and enforcing processes for the Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC) which cuts across multiple silos - Geographical (San Francisco, Boston, Bangalore), Organizational (IT, business unit, outsourced vendor), Technology (.NET, Java, mainframe) and Functional (business analysts, development, testing). To address these universal challenges faced by the development organizations, a discipline known as Application Lifecycle Management or ALM is growing in importance. ALM is a discipline as well as a product category which in addition to supporting specific life-cycle activities; also keeps them in sync; and it doesn’t live exclusively in individual tools but in the integrations and data and process exchanges between them. It is this precise value proposition that Kovair Global Lifecycle Enterprise Edition offers to its customers and is briefly outlined below.
Kovair Global Lifecycle Enterprise Edition consists of three components:
- Kovair Lifecycle Applications
- Kovair Process Automation Technology
- Omnibus Integration Bus for IT™
Kovair’s built-in applications
Kovair has some of the industry’s leading development applications built-in. While competing favorably with any point solution of the same category they also offer additional business values in terms of
- Single Repository data base for all the built-in applications
- Single User Interface to reduce training, administrations and maintenance
- Industry’s leading Task based Process Engine
- Capability to add unlimited number of user-defined Functional Entities and flexible relationships between entities
- 100% Ajax based Web Interface
Kovair is currently used in Fortune 100 to medium sized companies for various different combinations of built-in applications. Some of the examples of the possible usages of Kovair are:
- Ideation/ Product Management
- Capture Suggestion from Corporate Website and/or emails
- Automated Suggestion review/ approval Process
- Conversion to Requirements
- Requirements Management
- Capture Requirements from Microsoft Word, Excel, Text, XML files
- Automated Requirements review/ approval Process
- MRD Document in Microsoft Word format
- Traceability between Requirements and other Entities
- Release Roadmap Planning with Resources and Prioritization
- Graphical Metrics Reporting
- Test Management
- Test Cases and Test Runs
- Changes in Requirements impacts Test Cases – by Traceability Relation
- Integration Capability with – Quality Center, Silk, WinRunner, Internal Tools
- Testing Graphical Metrics Reports
- Development Management
- Assigning Roles & Resources
- Automated Development Process – no more baby-sitting tasks
- Monitoring Progress for each Developer, Tester…
- Vendor Management
- Deliverables Management for Outsourced Projects
- Actual vs. Planned cost/ effort analysis
- Automated Process – Review/ Accept/ Return…
- Automated Notification on approaching/ missed deadlines
- IT Operations Management
- Incident/ Problem/ Change Management/ Help Desk
- Many-to-many relation between Entities
- Project Portfolio Management
- Drill-down to individual Projects
- Projects linked to Operational Items – Requirements, Issues…
- Automated Stage-Gate Process
Process Automation Technology
In contrast to tools with methodology guidelines and document templates as ‘Process Tools’ Kovair Global Lifecycle gives an organization the flexibility and power not just to design and document a process, but also to automate and enforce it without any additional overhead. It consists of a flexible Business Process Management (BPM/ Workflow) engine specifically designed to cater to lifecycle processes for every area of automation. Learn more about Process Automation and whitepapers
Omnibus technology: Kovair’s Process Hub
Using Kovair’s Omnibus Web Services Technology, an Enterprise can extend the values of Kovair’s built-in applications by integrating all the different tools they use including:
- Configuration Management system: Clearcase, Perforce, Subversion, CVS, StarTeam
- Test Management Software: Quality Center
- IT Operations & Service Desk: BMC Remedy, CA Univision, HP-Peregrine
- Project Portfolio Management: Clarity, HP PPM Center, Compuware, Planview, Borland Tempo
- Other 3rd party and internal legacy tools
Learn more about Omnibus
