Our two primary tools within the SDLC have always been PPM and ALM which have to the unique roles within the SDLC and yet most sales personnel attempt to divide these products into organizational alignment such as project management office aligns directly with PPM and ALM for the most part is still sold directly as a QC solution for testing groups. As we all know the PMO groups often control most of the project discretionary funds and spending which also drives most companies adoptions of new process and methodologies. This is also the typical group that would spend large amounts of money on consistency in uniformity across IT and is always looking for an engine to drive their processes. The biggest issue with this is the PMO group is a typically not very technical and in often will view tools like ALM as to technical or rigid for their out-of-the-box thinking. Typically project managers would say something along the lines of "the tool should fit the process and not the other way around”. I have yet to walk into a meeting with the salesperson where he or she presented both solutions to the project management office group.The second scenario has to do mainly with our comfort level with our market share and the fear to compete directly with our competitors head-to-head and argue the points of the SDLC process in front of clients that we already have a foothold with as far as testing. That old Mercury tenacity replaced with market share complacency and residuals. While we have a far superior product (and I say that with confidence and experience) we still avoid open competition and competitiveness with our competitors both big and small. This is been playing now more and more often because we don't get the product specialist involved quick enough to counter or address our competitors marketing tactics. Relying on market share in an environment where social media has more power than a brand name such as HP our reliance on independent market research We must become more aggressive in all aspects of selling ALM as a complete application lifecycle management platform.
“Henry Ford developed the modern-day, assembly-line over 100 years ago, it was the catalyst for what we now know as our global economy. The key to this revolutionary idea was its simplicity. The concept was to automate the assembly process using the conveyor belt. In other words, Ford didn't address the fabrication of the car, he addressed the process in which the car was manufactured. He in turn was able to reduce the cost while increasing the quality of the product. HP has taken the same approach to the application lifecycle development process; each team within the SDLC process has become highly specialized and highly effective within their area of expertise. However, this has left them very siloed and ineffective when it comes to the whole SDLC process. HP believes by building-in automation, integration, real-time performance indicators and reliability into the complete software-development lifecycle process, IT organizations can now focus on reducing costs and improving quality.”
HP Software’s latest generation of Application Lifecycle Management, Quality Assurance, and Performance Validation products are squarely aimed at addressing velocities arch enemies. To help break-through organizational challenges, HP Software delivers collaborative systems that can be deployed globally and that provide deep real-time visibility to the up-to-the-minute health and associated action-items of complex software projects. With integrated social technology and full lifecycle traceability, HP Application Lifecycle Management helps ensure that business analysts, project managers, developers, and testers can constantly share vital information with each other, in full context. As we discussed in the previous slide, composite application development and testing constantly face delays associated with limited access to shared or public services, but it doesn’t have to be this way. Through the use of HP Service Virtualization, teams are able to build a dev/test cloud of virtualized (or simulated) services, removing impediments caused by limited access , and providing a smooth path to obstacle-freedevelopment and testing work.HP Software’s test automation and development lab management capability helps automate the laborious manual processes in dev and test—delivering lightning fast test execution across all modern environments, including cloud based testing of mobile, web, and other modern composite applications. I would like to explore these three areas by drilling down in particular to how HP Software adds value in Mobile, Agile, and composite applications. Let’s start with Mobile applications and have a look at success through the lens of Delta airlines.
The simplicity of answer sometimes gets lost in the complexity of the question which is why aren’t we able to sell a clearly superior product and services to clients that clearly need those products and services. ALM is a perfect platform in which a company or organization can build their software development lifecycle (SDLC) processes and methodology on top of this platform. To place ALM head of the pack for the management of the SDLC process we need to building new relationships with the people and groups that need a centralized SDLC management tool.
ALM best practices document with Project templates, Process training, and full delivery package (including Quick start). I also believe that we could find a new market around developing a complete CoE package by module. My thinking is that we are missing a market where we supply the complete packages including module by module best practices, process (with standard Documentation) and limited customization. The module packages would stand alone or fit together like pieces of puzzle Example; would be a client would like to use PS QC/ALM Defect management module with the process flow already built-in including documentation, training, etc… We then sale them a Defect Quick start module with Template, Tools, Documentation, Training, and support (upgrade, and patch). The client would then like to purchase the Test Plan, Resources and Business Process Testing modules project Templates which work fit perfectly with the Defect Module they purchase last year. Module Template designed with Best Practices, Process workflow, Documentation, tools, roles, and support:Defect and Reporting Module (I working on the Workflow)Test Plan Module which could included resources and business process testingRequirements Module including modeling toolsRelease and Version ModuleCross project Reporting and synchronization modulePerformance Center ModuleSystem Testing ModuleAutomation ToolsComplete ALM suite CoE including Templates
Now there is one more mega-trend that I would like to introduce – the accelerating time tables of modern application development In the user-centric world, apps are the heart of how people experience the enterprise. Before, the time required to take a business request and transform it into working functionality might be measured in months. But given the demands for a constant stream of new capabilities, now we measure delivery of new applications and services in weeks or even days. Of course this means a change to every aspect of the SDLC. This brings us to what we believe is a New IT Imperative.
BenefitsI 4ssues trends to support more informed decisions at the enterprise levelNew slide – whatsonshore and offshore resources, across multiple SDLC initiatives
Targeting the four key groups within the SDLC is absolutely critical to the future success of ALM as a platform for success and revenue for HP. The simplicity of answer sometimes gets lost in the complexity of the question which is why aren’t we able to sell a clearly superior product and services to clients that clearly need those products and services. While most groups would point to pricing and rightly so I would definitely counter with the fact that most IT groups are still increasing their budget yearly to address efficiency, product quality, and technology. We must stop catering to a specific group or team within the SDLC, while it's great to have advocates one specific group in the SDLC; however testing teams tend to have the smallest discretionary funds and even less influence of any of the four key groups within the SDLC. That is why I suggested focusing in on four key aspects which specifically to target those organizations/teams at each stage of the SDLC process. The answer to the complex question is all four groups have one thing in common and that is delivering an high-quality product in the least amount of time to the customer but to achieve that each group has specific and highly specialized characteristics.• Of course the most logical place to start is the release management by addressing key aspects that concern project management. PMO group's most corporations are the only group too has direct access to capital project's funding, which drives the largest majority of IT discretionary funds outside of operations or support. Release management primarily focuses in on project and application management from the aspect a single platform for clear and concise multitier reporting, tracking, and management that drive a single initiative through the SDLC process with the flexibility of handling one or more customized methodologies/strategies. How this needs to be approached is project managers look at tools such as PPM for their specific needs and not the overall SDLC process. We must elevate the conversation beyond budgeting and issue management and focus in on the more technical aspects in management of an application under development. For the most part, most PMO offices and medium to small corporations will look at PPM too much overhead for their company while ALM is really what they need.• During the design phase of the development process is by far one of the lowest tech areas of the SDLC process and by far been the lowest priority for innovation and automation of any single group based on the typical experience and level of a business analyst. While design modeling products are being marketed today, for the most part, these business analyst/business architect still rely on word documents, mockups, use cases, user stories, and spreadsheets. This phase is also known where most defects are introduced into the SDLC either through poor communications, invalid business rules, and most of all ambiguous requirements. The other characteristic of this phase of a SDLC process is the project delays or the inevitable scope creep that plagues SDLC process. This is a clear win for ALM against any other SDLC platform on the market today. I would be more than happy in great length on the subject. • Development phase and dealing with development groups has definitely been ALM's Achilles' heel since the inception of the ALM platform; however the capabilities of integrating correctly with the development toolset, specifically using IDE will definitely help but still places ALM at the back of the pack. Besides our lack of aggressiveness towards marketing ALM as a SDLC solution/platform our competitors both big and small have begun chipping away at our foothold in SDLC process and even furthermore gain a foothold in the testing groups by exploiting this gap. In addition not owning our own development IDE and code repository we suffer a character flaw when dealing with development groups which is we aren’t Microsoft or the other side of the spectrum which is freeware or shareware which are the two most common preferred criteria when selecting a specialized tools for individual developers. This grass-roots type of developer driven mentality is how a simple concept such as agile process now dominates most of the market and shareware tools like Atlassians JIRA can compete with us for market share.• Test management and testing teams which spawned ALM's innovations in structure is currently undergoing its own growing pains and internal issues in a lean SDLC process and the realization that the continuous testing and highly specialized expanded roles for testers and testing groups such as security, integration, and even the responsibility of unit testing which quickly becoming a reality. While we can’t afford to ignore the other 3 key groups within the SDLC process, we shouldn’t forget the group in the SDLC process they got us a seat at the table. In addition, we have ignored current market trends or chose to farm out products or services to so-called partners who allegiance to the HP brand is considered a one-way street and willingly sign partner agreements before the ink is cold on the contract with our competitors, or even worse the same partners will intentionally undermine our product line to promote their in-house solutions.
In software engineering, continuous integration (CI) implements continuous processes of applying quality control — small pieces of effort, applied frequently.Continuous integration aims to improve the quality of software, and to reduce the time taken to deliver it, by replacing the traditional practice of applying quality control after completing all development.”
This shows the different lifecycle stages involved in CI – that concerns agile planning/development/building/testing. While the stages themselves are well understood, CI requires specific best practices and automation to be introduced to co-ordinate across these lifecycle stages to enable high quality software that is commit ready in every iteration. We will discuss some of these best practices next