Understanding ALM Systems

RYAN MCELROY

VP, Technology

While the exact terms and steps in an Application Lifecycle vary by organization, the core concepts and steps remain very similar. Hylaine defines a typical Application Lifecycle as the following:

• Requirements Gathering

• Development

• Testing

• Deployment

• Optimization

While these steps are taken with every software product, one or more may be neglected. An organization's process is tightly tied to the tools (or lack thereof) that they use to manage each of these steps.

ALM (Application Lifecycle Management) tools are those that attempt to manage the entire lifecycle in a one-stop solution. For organizations looking to simplify, or those early in their decision-making process who are passionate about making the right selection the first time, we would like to offer our experiences with two major players in the Enterprise ALM space: Atlassian's suite of core products (BitBucket, Jira, and Confluence) and Microsoft's ALM tool (Azure DevOps).