Full time killer: Using VSTS2010 for software lifecycle management

Application Life Cycle Management

Like anything in the world, software development has its life cycle. Typically, we divide the lifecycle of a software into phases such as analysis, design, development, testing, deployment, maintenance, and eventual abolition, while the use of various tools to assist in the management of each key link is called Application Lifecycle Management (alm:application lifecycle Management).

If management is lacking, or if a link in the process is built on the wrong result of a process, the entire software engineering is likely to face a failure. The focus of application lifecycle management is to look at the whole process of software development as a continuous, repeatable process: definition, design, development, testing, deployment, and management. Each part of the process needs to be taken seriously and monitored to ensure that the entire process is completed successfully.

Figure 1 Application Life cycle Management

By implementing Application lifecycle management, we can achieve the following benefits:

Increase productivity, the entire team shares the best practices for development and deployment (practices) processes, while developers only need to focus on specific business requirements (Business requirement)

Improve quality so that ultimately delivered applications meet user expectations (expectation)

Break the barriers in the process of cooperation, especially the communication barriers between technicians and non-technical personnel, so that all kinds of information flow in the project is unobstructed

Accelerate development with simplified integration scenarios

Keep the design synchronized with the application to reduce maintenance time

Maximize investment in skills (Skill), processes (process), Technology (Technology)

Increase application flexibility in responding to business changes by reducing the time required to modify and build the program