| | SEPTEMBER 20168CIOReviewApplication Lifecycle Management - Governance, Development and OperationsBy Krishnakumar Madhavan, Head IT, KLA-Tencor IndiaApplication lifecycle management (ALM) is the product lifecycle management of computer programs. It encompasses requirements management, software architecture, computer programming, software testing, Software maintenance, change management, continuous integration, project management and release management.The Three Aspects of ALMApplication Life Cycle Management can be divided into three distinct areas: Governance, Development and Operations.OPINIONIN MYAn application's life cycle begins with its creation, proceeds to deployment to production and ends in removal from service when the application no longer has business value. Governance, which encompasses all of the decision making and project management for the application, extends over this entire time. The purpose of Governance is to make sure the application always provides what the business needs and to ensure an ongoing understanding of the application's benefits and costs. Development, the process of actually creating the application, happens between creation and deployment. For most applications, the Development process reappears several more times in the application's lifetime, both for upgrades and for wholly new versions. Note that for some applications, the money spent on these updates and new versions can significantly exceed the original development costs. Modern software development can typically be thought of as a series of iterations. Each iteration contains some requirements definition, design,development, and testing.Every deployed application must be monitored and managed. Operations, the work required to run and manage the application, typically begins shortly before deployment and runs continuously until the application is removed from service.The three aspects of Application Lifecycle Management are tightly connected, and any organization that aspires to maximize the business value of custom software will have to do all three well. ALM is much more than SDLCSoftware Development Life Cycle ­ SDLC is limited to the phases of software development, i.e. requirements, design, coding, testing, configuration and project management. ALM deals with a broader perspective of applications. It does not finish at the end of development, but deals in removing when the application is no longer used by the business i.e. primarily many years after the initial development. To simplify, ALM is the superset which includes one or more SDLCs that may appear in the entire lifecycle.As the three aspects of ALM ­ Governance, Development and Operations are the indispensable parts of any application, they need to be connected to each other to maximize business
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