What is ALM?

Developing software that aligns with key business objectives is challenging for most businesses. In turn, managing the effectiveness of workflows and the software development presents an even bigger challenge. Many software projects fall behind schedule, exceed budget, fail to meet requirements and deliver poor value to the business.

Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) focuses on improving and managing the activities, tools and processes you use to build, upgrade and maintain an application over its lifetime. ALM encompasses everything from initial concepts through to the first release and beyond as you modify, extend and build upon the initial application.

Why ALM?

Using ALM will improve and refine your engineering and project management practices and tooling used to support those practices. Implementing a successful ALM strategy is guaranteed to increase collaboration and productivity within your team and improve the quality of your software.

The conventional ‘just develop it’ attitude to software development often fails to deliver measurable business benefits and return on investment, due to the poor alignment of IT and business needs.

Benefits of an ALM approach:

Improved communication and understanding of business needs between IT and the business
Increased visibility into the development process
Increased ability to accept change as a normal part of the process
Improved quality of delivered software
Greater collaboration and productivity within the delivery team
Increased return-on-investment from business initiatives

GraysOnline

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GraysOnline sought to augment their successful auction business with a range of fixed price, “buy now” products. This required a significant update to their existing web property to support the new sales model, providing an opportunity to revamp their existing website at the same time.

The solution was an e-Commerce system that encompassed everything from the internet website to back-end tools and integration components.

Readify delivered benefits to the partnership through the full lifecycle of the project in the form of SCRUM methodology coaching, requirement scoping, solution architecture, development and go-live transition management. Use of a strong SCRUM methodology allowed the project to adapt to and deliver upon a complex and changing scope
Australian Rugby Union

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The ARU had a number of disparate applications to support various business activities. Each of these applications has had its own identity system with individuals using multiple logins to access functionality. In total, there were more than 600,000 individuals in the system. The ARU has embarked on a process of streamlining and improving its information architecture in preparation for the next period of growth in both the expectations and demands of the general public in accessing rugby information and in the game itself.

The ARU has a strategic platform direction that is based on the Microsoft stack. Readify worked closely with the ARU to convert a proof of concept into a production ready identity service that could be used by all applications, complete with facilities to authorise users, manage passwords and identity cards

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Overview Steps Services Expertise

Regardless of whether your business adopts a ‘just develop it’ approach, or conversely is so ‘process driven’ that nothing gets finished, Readify can help improve your IT solution delivery process.

Readify can help define your path to improvement by breaking down what can seem a significantly large and long-term program of work, into small and incremental steps needed to successfully bring about the changes for improvement easily and efficiently.

Implementing an ALM strategy takes time and the focus should be on practices and practice improvement, and not simply tools. Tools should only be used to support your process improvements. When drawing up your implementation plan, you should also ensure it is aligned with your key business drivers and consider the impact on existing projects.
Readify ALM Services: Our People

Devpods

Readify Devpods are based on a team-orientated project delivery capability which combines a high performance development team using an Agile method (specifically Scrum). The team is augmented with tools selected from Microsoft’s Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) platform which ensures that the team can accurately report progress against development objectives

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Consulting

Readify provide a range of consulting offerings to assist your business in implementing an effective ALM strategy. We pride ourselves on the expert technical advice and support we offer to ensure the right technology choices are made to and achieve the best outcomes.

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Training

When implementing your ALM strategy, Readify provides mentoring, guidance and training throughout the delivery of the project to ensure your team has the right understanding of how to deliver projects with new Microsoft technologies. Our specialist training services are designed for IT developer professionals and are highly practical, comprehensive and interactive

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Readify ALM Expertise: Our People

Our ALM team includes Certified Scrum Masters & Practitioners, Build Masters and Microsoft Most Valuable Professionals (MVP) including a TFS MVP and Technical Specialist in Agile/ALM. The specific expertise required to implement an effective ALM strategy include

Certified Scrum Master: An individual who has undertaken special Scrum Master training and understands the dynamics of team development environments, enabling them to unblock impediments in the software development team.

Certified Scrum Practitioner: An individual who facilitates the development of a Certified Scrum Master. Their role is to provide the mentoring and guidance required to create superior Scrum Masters.

Build Master: An individual who knows how to use a variety of ALM tools and how to get the most of the development environment and tools to drive streamlined release management, build automation and test automation practices

SDE/T: Testing is important and is about attacking the software systematically and driving out quality issues. This takes the experience of a Software Development Engineer in Test

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Readify ALM Expertise: Our Organisation

Readify is a member of the Agile Alliance and holds several Microsoft Gold Certified Partner competencies. Readify specialise in equipping organisations to implement ALM processes through a deep understanding of Microsoft tooling and extensive understanding of multiple methodologies that can be applied to managing a project, such as the Microsoft Solution Framework, Scrum and Agile methodologies.

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Readify ALM Expertise: Our Technology Focus

Readify recommends using the Microsoft Visual Studio Team System (VSTS) product range (Visual Studio Team Edition and Team Foundation Server) to support your processes because of the exceptional integrated experience and the advanced reporting it provides. Readify can also assist with the implementation of a range of other tools to support your processes including a number of open source alternatives. Readify consultants have written a number of tools to help extend the VSTS products to provide features such as automated deployments, NUnit integration and team build lights, and can also provide links to a number of other non-Microsoft products that add to the overall VSTS experience.

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