Why Do You Need A Software Change Management Program?

Software change manage is a crucial process for IT organizations. For the forward thinking IT organizations, software automates a huge range of business processes. Alterations made to software are actually the changes that are made to the overall business processes. For instance, the way an insurance agency offers quotes for life insurance schemes in encoded in its quote engine. Involuntary alterations to this quote can often lead to an inadvertent alteration to the kinds of quotes that the life insurance agency offers. Hence, software changes need careful monitoring akin to the business intelligence procedures, as the two are interlinked.

Without a systematic software change management in place, IT organizations would lack a complete understanding of how the software operation in production can automate their business procedures. This involves efficient management of changes to software in production, development and any changes that are linked with artifacts like models, test cases and requirements management.

Business Requirements For Efficient Software Change Management

Many business entrepreneurs and decision makers when surveyed believe in the advantages of software change management. The present day business scenario has made business houses and enterprises believe that need to depend on this process in order to cater to the increasing demands of the clients and end users.

Even if technology is static, IT enterprises would be changing rapidly as the business world they need to align with is very dynamic. Furthermore, with the total pace of business gaining momentum, the demand for IT too also has gone up for internal operations. Ever changing competitive landscapes, acquisitions and mergers, maximized proximity to consumer through the Web 2.0 technologies and social computing all generates a pressure for IT to offer software changes quickly and efficiently.

Furthermore software requirements are predictable all through the application lifecycle. Therefore, any unaddressed and unidentified change makes the application releases encounter hassles and sometimes they face unfavourable consequences. In order to manage these changes efficiently, leading companies specializing in application lifecycle management have introduced efficient change management solutions that help to manage and track changes proactively. The changes are also monitored with a reactive impact analyses all through the software lifecycle.

Efficient automated change management programs can be executed for minimizing the chances of risk consequences. The new age change management solutions have been designed keeping the present day requirements and are user friendly, acts as a single repository for application lifecycle changes, successfully links same kind of change items to change packages, ensures a two-way requirements traceability matrix and operates in a process driven methodology.

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Benefits Of Software Development Life Cycle - SDLC Solutions

Today most companies have witnessed and realized the productive benefits of outsourcing. As a result of which more and more organizations are opting in for outsourcing concerning software development projects to key offshore locations. However, it is crucial to have a complete idea about the software development lifecycle (SDLC) is an essential task. This is important not only for every software development solution provider but also for the end users and clients to keep a tab on the progress of the project all through the software development process.

Software development is a complicated procedure that requires a great deal of planning, execution and testing. It is not possible to develop software will complete functionality until and unless all the tests, reviews and quality analysis procedures are done. Therefore organizations needs to keep a check on the SDLC while they are experiencing software development outsourcing.

Furthermore every software development solution provider needs to put special focus on SDLC in order to generate better and efficient functional and critical mission software that helps businesses in the long run. The software development life cycle (SDLC) can be defined as a pre-set framework that is utilized by every software development organizations in order to set up effective information systems and software.

Today leading solution providers dealing in application lifecycle management, have come up with advanced  SDLC solutions including the following components:

* Requirements Management Tools

* Test Management

* Issue Management

* Risk Management

* Release Management

* Document Management

* IT Project Management

This apart, few other SDLC features such as Configuration and Build Management can be attained by incorporating the third party tools utilizing simple two-way directional data transfer adapters that are established for integration environments. SDLC solutions also provides a standardized and organized process for every stage in the software development. This helps in catering to all types of functional requirements and strategic objectives.

Apart from the huge global MNC’s are the large scale companies, today SDLC process is also used by the SME’s as well. This is because in today’s competitive market, everyone is striving to gather innovative software solutions and other mobile applications to facilitate their business operations. Hence, it is essential that the SME’s too understand the significance of the sdlc process and the ways in which they can add value to their organization.

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A Perfect ALM Process with OSLC Integration

Integration is one of the primary requisites in the application lifecycle management process for an accomplished software development. In the traditional setup it was a challenge to develop integration due to its brittle nature, and a great amount of rework was required when a new release of the existing product was deployed. As the integration of products from multiple vendors was a complicated task it led to closed implementations. There was no scope for a viable option and you would have had to resort to a restrictive and rigid strategy.

The new-age technology provides OSLC integration or Open Services for Lifecycle Collaboration. This is an open community that facilitates the creation of specifications for tools integration purposes. Independent software and product lifecycle tools integrate their data and workflow with the help of these specifications. Such as software development life cycle tools can be used for tracking defects, for requirements management and test management for integration of the data and workflows for an end-to-end lifecycle process.

The OSLC group helps to effectively address individual integration domains like configuration management, change management, requirements management and test management. Each group explores the integration environment and sets specifications for the lifecycle artifacts to provide maximum support. The community specifies the rules for the usage of HTTP and RDF that all groups must comply with. OSLC creates specifications to allow two tools to collaborate seamlessly.

OSLC provides two methods of tools integration. One is by linking data via HTTP and the other method is by linking data via the HTML User Interface. The first method specifies a common procedure for the creation, retrieval, updating and deletion of lifecycle data as per the HTTP and RDP criteria with the help of the linked data technique. The procedure can be used by other tools and programs to collaborate amongst themselves.

In the second method the OSLC specifies a code that enables a tool or a client to display a portion of the web user interface of another tool, and facilitates you to link to a new or existing resource within another tool or see a glimpse of the resource that exists in another tool. This capability provides you with enhanced functions and efficient privileges.

You will not be able to achieve a complete and effective ALM integration process and desired results with independent and different tools. Without the OSLC integration the application development process will not be able to provide you with increased traceability. This can result in wastage of time and poor quality performances.

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Synchronize Software Development Activities with ALM

Software development lifecycle (SDLC) refers to the process of software development. It includes various phases such as planning, requirements gathering & analysis, design, development, integration & testing, and deployment.

Each phase of the software development process involves the efforts of a team of stakeholders such as business analysts, architects, developers, testers and managers. They use different kinds of tools such as IBM RequisitePro, ClearQuest, ClearCase, Enterprise Architect, HP Quality Center, Microsoft TFS, SharePoint, Visual Studio, Eclipse IDE, Atlassian Jira, Perforce, CA Clarity, Subversion, Hudson and so on to complete each phase of the software development lifecycle.

These best of breed tools help the different stakeholders to perform their respective tasks to near perfection. Though these are best of breed tools, they are siloed point function tools incapable of doing reciprocal operation with their counterparts.

The lack of effective collaboration and synchronization between the different practitioner tools resulted in limited traceability, wasted effort and time, unstable integrations, lower productivity, poor quality and unsatisfactory software delivery. This accelerated the need of a solution that would help overcome the limitations of the software development lifecycle. Hence the concept of Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) was born.

ALM is “the capability to integrate, coordinate, and manage the different phases of the software delivery process. From development to deployment, ALM is a set of pre-defined process and tools that include definition, design, development, testing, deployment, and management. Throughout the ALM process, each of these steps are closely monitored and controlled.” ALM brings about effective tool integration that helps to develop software applications of high quality at a faster rate.

A leading technology leader in application lifecycle management offers true end-to-end ALM with its innovative ALM integration platform. This platform helps to do away with not only complex and costly integrations but also overcome the limitations of point-to-point integration and single vendor tools integration. Let’s look at some of its advantages.

* Investment protection : This platform integrates tools from different vendors, including internally developed tools. Hence, it protects all the tool investments by a development organization.

* Best of breed tools for the best function : It allows integration of multiple third party ALM tools from different vendors for the same function. Moreover, it supports simultaneous use of multiple tools from multiple vendors in a single tool ecosystem.

* Flexible integration business rules : This platform does not have any hard coded embedded business rules and therefore are easily configurable.

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OSLC Integration and Its Innovative Features

Enterprises and its respective groups working on software delivery know that their efficiency level can rise up when tools used are collaborating together. The focus is maintained on traceability and responsibilities across the processes which helps to avoid any kind of manual overload. In the recent past, these tools have witnessed an evolution from point oriented tools , resolving selected narrow requirements in the software delivery lifecycle.

OSLC Integration defined

The OSLC Integration i.e. Open Service For Life Collaboration is an initiative taken to simplify collaboration across the product software and  delivery lifecycle .. The primary objective is to assist groups working with organizations to share lifecycle resources and utilize disparate tools in offering software irrespective of whether these tools generate from open source projects, in-house developers, IBM or from any other external vendors. This makes it simpler for all industry members to take part in the process.

By its lineage, OSLC integration stems from a community initiative done by IBM Rational. This community is responsible in establishing open specifications for services that assists tools from various domains to adjust and provide common integration scenarios. The specifications help in affirming tools to integrate their data with the help of an easy and live linking of artifacts in tools.

Features of OSLC Integration Solutions

Today IBM Jazz tools for instance Rational Team Concert (RTC), Rational Requirements Composer (RRC) and Rational Quality Manager (RQM) offer an inbuilt assistance for OSLC. Though it will take time before we can attain the state of OSLC helped by other eminent ALM solution vendors. Therefore the question is that how do you connect with leading ALM tools that does not follow OSLC standards on the JAZZ platform now?

Top notch service providers of application lifecycle management (ALM) solutions have established an OSLC wrapper that enables the tools to be exposed to OSLC Service Providers. The things you can do with OSLC integration are as follows :-

* Browse a list of Requirements in RequisitePro, Work Items in TFS, Test Cases in Quality Center, Build Results in Hudson and Defects in Jira from an OSLC Consumer tool like IBM RTC.

* Link any of the above mentioned artifacts enclosed in various tools in the context of a Requirement in RRC, Change Item in RTC and Test Case in RQM.

* You can create new artifacts in RequisitePro, Quality Center, TFS, SharePoint and Jira from RTC, RRC and RQM.

* As the artifacts are being worked on by various stakeholders, users with OSLC Consumer tools you are able to follow the recent status, updates, activities and comments.

* You can update artifacts and collaborate with other stakeholders.

It is a known fact that any ALM artifact in IBM RTC can achieve a live link to any artifact in Microsoft TFS. Eminent solution providers ALM solutions are currently enabling OSLC specifications for Quality Management Requirements Management and Change Management.

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