We've been throwing the term "Application Lifecycle Management" around for awhile -- long enough that the folks at Search Software Quality asked for my take on it. They just published
Just Enough ALM, my brief walk through the solution-space of ALM.
Now what I didn't say in the article is that I really dislike the term "lifecycle" for software. It's a modeling term - like talking about butterflies in 8th grade biology. Instead of a modeling approach, naturalists start with what we see and observe in the field and work backwards to theory.
Every time I hear someone say "I have worked on all aspects of the software development lifecycle" my spidey-sense goes off; here's someone talking in terms of an abstraction, instead of real experience. Of course, they could be very experienced and just struggle to communicate, and that's fine. Yet my overall conclusion, to borrow from Heinlein, is that
lifecycles are for insects.
The SSQ article is long enough that they cut the comment form to keep the page short, but I do value your comments. Please feel free to comment here; i'll even give you an incentive. If you comment and are interested, I'll forward you information on a free annual subscription to
Informationweek Magazine.
Informationweek is a real, physical, print magazine that actually comes out weekly. It mostly covers large-scale IT - data centers, cloud computing, Oracle, Cisco, SalesForce.com, IBM, Dell, HP, and it's typical readers work for IT shops in large organizations. Every few weeks they have a section that is what remains of Dr Dobbs Journal, the old magazine for people involved in the software delivery process. If you fill out a survey, they're giving it away to qualified "IT Pros", I suspect in the United States.
If you'd like to talk about "Just Enough ALM", or just want a magazine subscription, drop me a note.