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Agile and ALM

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Written by CMC Media Staff   
Tuesday, 12 October 2010 01:00
 Agile and Alm - October  2010

Agile

Many agile-lean product development enterprises and teams that aren't formally applying Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) and using ALM vendor tools are interested in doing so. But many of these enterprises and teams aren’t completely clear about the implications of ALM on their adoption of agile-lean product development.

As a result, enterprises and teams that adopt ALM and integrate it with their adoption of agile-lean product development are often pleasantly surprised when ALM helps their enterprise wide adoption of agile-lean product development. That is of course if done right. Conversely done wrong there is a high risk your adoption of ALM will result in not achieving the return-on-investment and value you had planned.

This edition of the Agile Journal will provide you insights about the integration and touch points of agile-lean product development and ALM and what it really takes to effectively integrate the two.

Alan Shalloway, in his article Using Lean-Agile to Provide the Real Value of ALM discusses if Agile is going to make a difference to an organization, it must accomplish two things.  First, it must assist us in being driven by business needs – not the development organization. Second, it must help us with the entire value stream – not merely part of it.

In my article Does Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Help or Hinder the Adoption of Agile-Lean Product Development?, I’ll explore how ALM may help your enterprise wide adoption of agile-lean product development, if done right. Conversely done wrong there is a high risk your adoption of ALM will result in not achieving the return-on-investment and value you had planned.

Pan-Wei Ng and Mark Magee, in their article, Light Weight Application Lifecycle Management Using State Cards, present a pragmatic and novel approach using a deck of A-8 (5 1/4" x 7 7/8") sized state-cards that is small enough to fit into your pocket. He describes how you can use the state-cards to understand the state of application development, how to define your lifecycle model; you can use it to define your value streams.

Roman Pichler, in his article How much Visioning is Necessary in Scrum?, explores the question how much visioning is required in Scrum. It focuses on the product vision as one of the key visioning artifacts and suggests keeping the visioning investment to a minimum.

Your agile buddy and editor,
Russell Pannone
Editor
Agile Journal
Featured articles...


Using Lean-Agile to Provide the Real Value of ALM
by Alan Shalloway
"We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them."

– Albert Einstein

If Agile is going to make a difference to an organization, it must accomplish two things.  First, it must assist us in being driven by business needs – not the development organization. Second, it must help us with the entire value stream – not merely part of it.  All too many organizations start and achieve seeming success with team centric pilot projects. Yet, many of these  do not have a positive impact to the bottom line of the organization.  Lean can assist Agile methods by providing a broader perspective in what needs to be looked at – both in the value stream and in how to achieve the transition itself. Thus we must turn scaling agility on its head and think about agility at scale right from the beginning with Lean-Agile.

Read More >>


Does Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) add Value or Hinder the Adoption of Agile-Lean Product Development?
by Russell Pannone
In a Forrester’s report, The Changing Face Of Application Life-Cycle Management[1], nearly one-third of enterprises are already using Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) processes and tools, and almost half are aware of it (see Figure-1). But in conversations with user companies, we find that even those familiar with the term are often hard-pressed to define it.
Read More >>



Light Weight Application Lifecycle Management Using State-Cards
by Pan-Wei Ng and Mark Magee
It is a well known fact that all applications are different; all application development teams are different. So, why should we expect application lifecycle management to be fixed? There is no such thing as “one size fits all.” Yet, it is also common sense that there must be something in common, as otherwise there is absolutely no way to learn from experience and mistakes. The challenge is then to find a middle ground that is easy to communicate to the development team and stakeholders. In this paper, I present a pragmatic and novel approach using a deck of A8 (5 1/4" x 7 7/8") sized state-cards that is small enough to fit into your pocket. I will demonstrate how you can use the state-cards to understand the state of application development, how to define your lifecycle model; you can use it to define your value streams. It is important to get your team to define and own their application development process and state-cards provide the building blocks to do so.
Read More >>

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How much Visioning is Necessary in Scrum?
by Roman Pichler
Before a Scrum team is ready to start the first sprint, some prep work has to take place: “The minimum plan necessary to start a Scrum project consists of a vision and a Product Backlog,” writes Ken Schwaber in his book Agile Project Management with Scrum. Scrum does not define how the vision and the initial product backlog are created, nor does it provide guidance on how much time and effort should be invested in the visioning activities. This is in stark contrast to traditional approaches, which emphasize carrying out market research, product planning and business analysis work before the software is developed.
Read More >>







Last Updated on Tuesday, 12 October 2010 14:50
 
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