One aspect of Application Lifecycle Management that is often overlooked is process.

Simply integrating tools does not in itself form an ALM solution. Careful attention needs to be placed on the process around each of the distinct ALM disciplines, such as Requirements Management, Design, Development, Testing and Release Management.

Establishing clear process for each of those disciplines which feed into one another provides traceability and visibility across departments in an organization. This is where the value is.

Ryan Lloyd

ALM Product Manager

MKS Inc.

Good point - but it affects all tool vendors, even those thst work on process (as, to be fair, IBM/Rational does, although it hasn't, to my mind, had quite the "programme management" focus MKS has).

But bad project management processes have probably killed more projects than bad analysis - and bad technology is an also-ran in the failure stakes....

It's a culture thing. If a company isn't the sort that says what it is going to do, does it, and then monitors the gap between its aspirations and what actually happened, than no tool will help it much - I think.

But all too many regard a "post implementation review" as a chance to assigb blame rather than to improve process....