Advanced Application Life Cycle Management- The Best Way To Improve Product Quality

A package of software suites designed, developed and marketed by HP(Hewlett-Packard) called ‘Application Life Cycle Management’ or ‘ALM’ is used to accelerate the secure delivery of software applications. ALM targets to manage the core lifecycle of software applications starting from designing phase to product delivery phase. It provides a common platform along with a dashboard to manage the tasks.

HP ALM offers a complete package of application development solutions along with application testing solutions. Micro Focus International and IBM are other companies which offer ALM software.

Details

The ALM provides an application management platform which is centralized. This platform aids in managing and automating the teams throughout the development phase within a single workflow.

The software is designed to support the teams to deliver the applications throughout the development lifecycle based on iterations. The software aids in requirements management, testing modules such as test planning, functional testing and performance testing, developer management and defect management. All these core activities are connected by a single platform from the workflow perspective. It offers a common management platform, project tracking, repository and open integration architecture. Even consulting services are offered by HP to support its ALM.

Component of ALM

• Project Planning and Tracking

This module helps the development teams to define, measure, track and report the project milestones. It also assists in monitoring the key performance indicators.

• Lab Management Automation

By integrating HP ALM with HP CDA, the testing teams can deploy a test lab in hybrid delivery environment.

• Asset Sharing and Re-use

Sharable asset libraries are supported by HP ALM which helps in traceability, maintaining library integrity, re-synching with the library and cross-project defect collaboration.

• Application Lifecycle Intelligence

This module assists in traceability of defects or requirements making the task of QA team easy. It significantly benefits and improves the quality of product. It provides a real-time visibility and traceability into the developing system throughout the lifecycle.

• Cross-project Reporting

HP ALM offers pre-configured business views for reports and cross- project reporting.

• HP Enterprise Collaboration

This suite uses social media platform for communication between development teams within the ALM environment. Just like the reviews and comments associated with social media platforms, the developers can review or comment on the defects, incidents and reports on related projects.

• Requirements Definition and Management

This suite can be used to build, manage or track product/project requirements throughout SDLC.

• HP Fortify Security

Powered by Fortify software, this suite provides application security software which includes both dynamic testing and static code analysis of the software application. HP ALM integrates with HP Fortify Software for secure application delivery.

• HP Performance Center

This suite consists of a performance testing platform and framework at enterprise-class level. The IT departments can make use of this software to centralize, standardize and run performance testing or regression testing. HP LoadRunner is exclusive software by HP built for performance testing which supports both developers and testers and integrates with HP ALM.  

• Quality Assurance

HP ALM offers a good package of QA features which aids in risk-based test planning, risk-based test management, version control, traceability, release, baselining. Test lifecycle management, scheduling and execution, manual testing and defect management.

HP Quality Center is another platform for quality management used to manage application quality across the entire application.

• Multi-environment Support

HP ALM provides a multi-environment support as it can installed on-site through the cloud using the SaaS model. The suite is also compatible for mobile devices including Apple products or Android devices.

The Advanced Application Lifecycle Management approach improves the product quality and reduces the communication barriers between teams throughout the software development lifecycle. Thereby it increases the productivity and work efficiency of teams.

ALM provides end-to-end process support and tool support throughout Software Development Life Cycle. It has a wide range of application suites which caters to numerous software requirements and offer multi-environment support.