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The term “ALM” is mainly used in the context of software application. Application lifecycle management (ALM) is the process of managing the entire product lifecycle process of a software program, right from interpretation/design to its retirement.
In today’s era, application lifecycle management is an essential method in the app development process and every app development company needs to embrace and follow it seriously to make the whole process run smoothly. ALM is used to outline the methodologies for various application development so that the methods and the tools can be used effectively and thus improve efficiency.
Important phases of an application lifecycle
- Requirements specification
- Software Development
- Programming
- Testing
- Software Maintenance
- Deployment
- Project Management
- Release Management
3 most critical stages of ALM that everyone should know
Requirement Specification – Specification of requirement is one of the most crucial stages of the application lifecycle. This is something from where everything begins, and you gather the requirements.
As we know, application development starts with the idea and drawing of the requirement, so every relevant stakeholder needs to define the software developer about what they want to have in the application that supports their business. This is the source for generating the requirements. Part of proper requirements specification practice is to categorize the criteria based on modules, features and other aspects. It is also done by prioritizing them as per their importance.
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Development & Testing – After specifying the requirements, the next critical phase is to start the development of the application. At the inception of the process; different representatives come together and split the application’s requirements into parts and steps. Then each representative from different teams will handle various steps like development, testing, support, IT, sales and so on.
The aim here is to verify that the software developer meets all the actual needs, and the developed application will be simple to use, test, and deploy. Testers must start preparing their test cases and scenarios for the testing phase during the development phases.
They need to be in constant touch with the developers to provide feedback about the application. The most popular development methodologies and tools are the sequential (such as Waterfall) and the iterative based (such as Agile). During the testing phase, testers need to identify the issues and bugs and report them to the experts so that they can fix the problem.
Maintenance – Maintenance is the eternal stage of ALM and it is the phase where you monitor & maintain your deployed application. In this stage, the participation of the development and testing teams is usually the lowest. The maintenance duration of the application depends on the previous phases.
If the work has been done effectively during the preceding phases, then the volume of product maintenance will be significantly lower. Basically, the more issues were found during the testing phases, the fewer intricacies will be seen during the maintenance processes.
Application Lifecycle Management Tools
Many products are claiming to be Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) tools, but the accepted industry standards which allow a service to be an “ALM method” are:
- It should include more than one ALM phase.
- It should enable users to view the traceability between the different stages.
- It should show the history of the entities.
The Importance of Application Lifecycle Management these days
Nowadays, building an application with an ALM plan is crucial for any application development company. ALM is mainly useful for app development company because it provides clear direction to the team, speeds up development, and lowering the chances of bugs and issues. With a better application lifecycle development tools, teams can give more focus to the development process and have better distinctness into the development status. By integrating the right processes, tools, and experts from starting to end ALM enables businesses to make better applications or software products and manage efficiently. Using an effective tool is the best way to approach ALM.
