Tooling up for best IT ALM Management

It departments of huge federal agencies generally tend to have an accumulation of non-integrating, multi-vendor Commercial-off-the Shelf (COTS) engineering tools which are used in dissimilar processes. These disparate tools are the possessions of and administered by different contractors, internal organizations and agencies. To ensure smooth re-engineering with minimized impact to present day development and maintenance activities, such organizations require an integrated tool environment for optimized IT Application Lifecycle Management. Seamless control is what most organizations seek.

Organization Challenges in IT Service Management

• In IT Service Management organizations are always on the lookout for infrastructure and services that can ably support Information Technology (IT) development and maintenance. Most organizations have such support albeit in fragmented ways. Such organizations need to ensure complete synchronization between engineering, support and delivery divisions with its specific processes, structures, methodologies and tools respectively.

• The other challenges that most organizations face is with business solutions and applications which are generally developed and maintained by other contractor firms who used their own tools to support diverse phases of the development lifecycle. Such firms generally do not have any particular tool set for these processes. What they then tend to do is to develop the solution and then independently test it. These firms transport, store, control and test the code in another environment, more often than not with a different set of tools. Thereafter migration to the production environment, problem and incident reporting and tracking would be done using yet another set of tools. What happens with such myriad usage of tools that each of those tools becomes its own silo, which tends to reinforce the maintenance of silos across the IT department!

• The disparate tools may not be smoothly connected with each other, this makes information flow manual thus renders it sans coordination and synchronization.

• The IT department across such organizations find it difficult to share information between different lifecycle solutions, trace items through phases, propagate changes through phases, establish end-to-end automated lifecycle processes, enforce consistent project management controls across phases, and gain total visibility into the status and progress of development and IT projects.

To summarize the issues, the lack of process across the tools results in traceability between Consolidated reporting being performed manually. Additionally there is a lack of visibility between groups. Thus all the essential ingredients of true Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) will end up being left out!

Tooling up intelligently!
Organizations to tide over the above mentioned problems require a Life Cycle Development tool suite which can offer a uniform process, a common interface, and integrated tools environment with several tools connected through adaptors for seamless data transfer between them. It should support code storage, traceability metrics, reporting, development, testing, integration, production, and trouble-shooting. It should be superior to other tools for Requirements Management and Requirements Management tool and use current SDLC/ALM best practices for software development and maintenance. It should also provide clear guidance with its process methodology and also direct and guide for policies and procedures used by engineering review boards and other integrators that supports the organization.

Read more about Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) at Wikipedia.
Also read more about enterprise service bus here.

Top tips for IT managers to effectively handle process management

Most IT managers would want to solve problems and improve productivity as far as process improvement is concerned, since IT managers realize that errors can be costly and also hamper profit stream in the enterprise. So while some enterprises may think that picking up competent employees is enough to ensure that errors and mistakes are minimized, unfortunately every enterprise has limitations as far as ensuring only the best people are entrusted with jobs within the enterprise. What these IT managers require is a system that helps move people and processes in the right time and right manner. Process improvement can definitely help define workflow and is reliable and adaptable to meet and surpass challenges that are thrown up in every evolving business environment. Here are a few tips that could prove useful for IT department heads:

• Traceability is the key

IT managers need to realize that defect tracking systems are essential and not just in helping track problems, but also to provide the guidance to ensure proper product support and maintenance for every enterprise. IT managers thus need to maximize their defect tracking systems. IT department heads require systems that allow them to specify and implement workflows according to their envisioned business needs. This further assists them in tracking and enforcing compliance with their IT service management processes. Thus IT managers can be rest assured since they will be able to define agile processes and implement them in a matter of few hours.

• Identifying essential processes

Repetitive errors are a problem issue for IT departments across different enterprises. If the same errors keep occurring, then it is a clear indication that a repeatable process needs to be defined clearly. So while some enterprises train a well-qualified backup who can easily record the process steps and use them as a foundation for a process model. This can be further formally inputted into a workflow solution. Once that is done, it can allow other resources besides your expert to diagnose and resolve problems and also ensures continuous traceability into problems and challenges that confronts your enterprise.

• Defining goals for ever process

Processes may be designed for different situations yet goals for every process must be clearly defined. This allows IT heads to check and see if the goals have been met.

• Process improvement

Every process needs to be defined according to its task, role and responsibility. Therefore every process definition must necessarily include things like tasks, roles and responsibilities, task flows, decision points, approvals etc.

Capturing the execution of the process provides the visibility that every IT team requires to make the right decisions and confirm that processes, once established, are then followed on a reliable and repeatable basis. Workflow history logs and reports provide senior management the visibility needed in order to make important decisions and support solid IT Governance. This would ensure that IT managers make use of process management to their best advantage.

Read More about at IT service management Wikipedia.

Also read about Application lifecycle management here.

Integration can enhance your ALM ecosystem

CIO’s often struggle with queries of how to manage a project across diverse geographies, technologies that exist among different groups? How to ensure that these groups work together with their set of tools together? How does one tie all this together with the actual information island? The answer is simple; integration of these processes! Therefore all that needs to be done is integrate and automate processes across these tools. But is it as easy as it sounds? The answer is slightly complex, to grasp its complexities you need to comprehend why disparate tools can create problems for you. These problems include

• Unnecessary and  inconsistent information

Disparate tools could end up providing you with redundant information and are replete with errors.

• Disparate processes

Disparate tools often result in disparate processes that have no links of any kind between them, which means they are unlikely to be in sync with each other.

• Zero ability to trace information between individual tools

Owing to such disparate tools, information traces between such tools will be non-existent.

• Resorting to manual consolidated reporting

Difficulties in developing consolidated reports owing to issues in tracking information in disparate tools necessarily requires one to actually manually create consolidated reports.

• Zero visibility

With information locked in disparate tools especially when it’s used by a specific group, others in the organization will not be able to view the results.

Advantages of Integration between tools

Integration bus allocates easy multi-tool integration owing to its unique bus architecture. Additionally it offers cost savings and also ensures greater advantages especially to your Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) ecosystem. With the right kind of integration there would be

• Two way synchronization between multiples tools including multiple requirements management tools
• Meaningful integration between items as well allowing only the approved  requirements to be replicated from the requirement management tool

Getting disparate tools such as IDE, configuration management, build management etc to work in an integrated manner is very important. Such integration requires a proper process or else it can lead to failure. ALM support can be established properly only when these integration processes are put in place properly. The only panacea to all integration related problems is to define, implement, automate and enforce processes using state of the art process automation tools. Only when your integration process is in order you’re your ALM ecosystem actually work, ensuring complete success for your development project.

Read more about IT service management here.

Top 5 advantages of integrated ALM

Often ALM enterprises end up spending a lot of their investment on a massive amount of siloed point function tools that includes requirements management tools, architecture, coding, build testing, tracking and a whole lot more. The problem with these tools is that often they end up seeming too conventional and isolated. They tend to rely on age old manual procedures to enable synchronization of data betweens tools. This is precisely why enterprises need to integrate these multitudes of lifecycle tools to enable optimum application development. Here are the top 5 advantages that integrated Application lifecycle management (ALM) brings about:

• Visibility into application development: An integrated ALM can connect in a better way allowing teams, individuals and organization to gain better insight into the application development process. This means queries of reviews, findings, requirement of corrective actions, application retesting, test cases failures, etc can be ably answered.
• Enables Global Distributed Development: Even as ALM is getting into the global space, working in disparate and different cultures can affect productivity and there can be a strong chance of duplication of work. Hence integrated ALM can help overcome such challenges effectively by ensuring tools are integrated behind firewalls and across several diverse networks overcoming structural obstacles across remote locations. This means on time delivery of projects and also within the stipulated budgets.
• Enhances productivity: Integration of ALM can bring about better implementation and can help enforce processes to ensure better productivity. Repeated tasks can be automated, reducing any kind of tedious rework. Since stakeholders are up to date with all information there is also tremendous reduction in constant travelling for meetings etc.
• Makes Delivery swifter: With shorter development lifecycle, enhanced team collaboration, elimination of errors and reduction of human interfaces, delivery becomes quicker and meeting of deadlines becomes even easier.
• Enhanced Customer satisfaction: Integrated ALM means adoption of best practice processes. This allows all developmental activities to be aligned with customer requirements. Therefore the customer will always get what he wants. In addition the customer can also enjoy real-time updates on the progress and development of the ALM support lifecycle. Owing to enhanced levels of transparency, the customer can easily trace lifecycle artifacts across the development stages.

So you can spend dollars buying the best tools but can they truly make your development process more effective? The answer is no. Without synchronization between IT and your business, you will not be able to provide enhanced value to your customers. The solution therefore is to have automatically synchronized software and collaboration system.

Read more about integrated ALM at wikkipedia.
Also read about IT Service Management here

Kovair Plug-In For Eclipse Development Environment

Introduction

Eclipse is known as industry’s leading open source development platform for Java based software. Eclipse IDE is mostly used by the developers, and often they need to work together and share information with other stakeholders like – Business Analysts, Architects, Project Managers and Testers. With growing involvements of multiple stakeholders in almost all phases of software development lifecycle, today, it has become a challenge to ensure – collaborative development environment for the stakeholders, regardless of their geographic locations and roles. You also can’t rule out the necessities of adopting disparate Application lifecycle management tools, and often some of them are outside the scope of Eclipse environment! Now, the question is – ‘how do we enable Eclipse developers to share information back and forth with other stakeholders from within their familiar Eclipse environment?’

Kovair Plug-In for Eclipse Development

‘Kovair plug-in for Eclipse’, a platform for Eclipse developers, ensures collaboration among the stakeholders throughout the development lifecycle, and synchronization among disparate ALM tools. Working with this plug-in, the access of Eclipse developer scan be extended to other artifacts like – Requirements, Design Artifacts, Test Cases, Tasks and Defects originating from diverse ALM tools without leaving their preferred IDE. Kovair plug-in for Eclipse is a dream come true for Java developers who wish to use a single tool environment both for doing their primary development job and collaborating with other teams. This plug-in helps any organization to provide an enhanced platform to developers where its established processes, tools and practices can be seamlessly integrated.

Read more about Eclipse Development Environment at wikipedia.  
Also read more about IT Service Management here.

10 Basic Questions to Define Requirement Management Tool -- How Kovair Global Lifecycle Addresses Them

1. How do you add a Requirement to Kovair
In Kovair Global Lifecycle, you can define and add a Requirement in any of  following ways:
Using Rich Text Editor. The formatting includes fonts, color, table, bullets, and numbering, embedded images. Multiple Undo-Redo, symbols and embedded link to other Requirements. Additional Rich Text custom fields can be defined too. Submitting from your Corporate Website or Portal

• Sending by Email
• Importing from Microsoft Word Document
• Importing from Microsoft Excel spreadsheet
• Importing form a CSV file with configurable format
• Using any third party Requirement Management tool and other tools to define Requirements; and in real–time synchronizing the data with Kovair.

2. Are there specific attributes for each requirement
Yes, there are few System defined attributes for Requirements but more importantly Kovair Global Lifecycle Application Lifecycle Management solutions allows you to create as many user-defined or Custom Fields for the Requirements. Attribute Fields can be created based on the following data types some of which are typical but others (highlighted here) are unique to Kovair and lend to the power of Kovair configurability: Date, DateTime, Float, Float with 2 Decimal, Integer, Custom Lookup (Single and Multiple), Multi-Line Text, Single-Line Text, Calculated Field, Grid Field, Rich Text, Electronic Signature Field, Summary Field, and Relation Type Field.

3. What happens w hen you mark a requirement complete
That depends on the definition of the ‘Complete’. For some of our customers it means freezing the Requirements for a Release. For some others it means actual implementation of the Requirements, testing and finally releasing them. Using Kovair’s process automation you can define, implement a process for Requirements and include your definition of “complete”.

4. How do we know if a requirement is satisfied in the current product
Satisfying a Requirement means it has been successfully tested at different levels – Unit, Integration and Acceptance. Kovair allows Test Management by its built-in Test Management application or by integrating other 3rd party Test Management tools and have traceability relations between Requirements and Tests to track whether each Requirement is tested successfully.

5. Can requirements be prioritized
Yes, prioritization can be done manually by setting the Priority attribute for each Requirement or it can be done in a more structured and dynamic way:

• Collaborative Ranking: Using this feature, the Evaluators can individually rate a Requirement based on certain criteria. This helps in arranging the Requirements in the Priority List based on the score that each one has received from the evaluators during the evaluation phase.
• Decision Support System (What If Analysis): It supports business and organizational decision- making activities and helps the organization to prioritize requirements based on certain constraints into different buckets, e.g. Releases.
  
  

6. Does Kovair commit us to a specific philosophy of requirement management
No, Kovair Global Lifecycle is so flexible in terms of configurability that it can be fully configured to accommodate the client’s philosophy of managing requirements. Kovair does not follow any specific philosophy of Requirements Management; rather we implement the customer’s philosophy into the tool. Kovair has been configured to follow Waterfall, Agile and other proprietary methodologies.

7. How is a change request against a requirement handled
Change Request can be created as an entity in Kovair Global Lifecycle and just like Requirements all the features will be available for Change Request as well. Kovair can be configured to handle a Change Request process which is typically different from a Requirement Management process. Some of these changes are new enhancements which will end up being new requirements and others may be related to existing requirements. Using Kovair’s traceability relation the links may be setup between the Changes and related Requirements.

8. Can w e associate non-conformance to a requirement
Certain Custom Fields can be created for each of the non-conformance categories that can be used as a checklist kind of feature by the users to track different non-conformances to a requirement.

9. Can w e define a workflow for requirement revision process within the product
Yes, Kovair application has an inbuilt drag and drop Visual Workflow / Process designer that allows users to define a Task-based Process for not only Requirements but for each of the phases of the Application Lifecycle and automate them. During the Process execution, it automatically generates Tasks for the Roles or users as defined in the Process.

10. Can you keep track of costs (man hours and $$) for each requirement
Yes, there are a number of attributes provided by the tool, out of the box, for tracking the cost (Planned as well as Actual) of each Requirement. For example Planned Cost, Actual Cost, Planned Duration (in hrs), Actual Duration (in Hrs), Planned Work, Actual Work, etc. Additionally Kovair lets you create Custom Fields, of various data types that also can be used in this regard.

Read more about Requirements Management Tool at wikipedia.
Also read more about IT Service Management here.

Kovair Omnibus Integrations Middleware

Kovair Omnibus is the leading ESB (Enterprise Service Bus) integration technology available for Application Development and IT tools. This technology offers an open and seamless integration middleware with all essential Application lifecycle management services, like collaboration, traceability, process automation, security, reporting and analytics built on a single repository. With standardized SOA based tools specific Omnibus adapters, one can create one’s own tools ecosystem. These tools can be from any vendor or any legacy data or any custom homegrown application development and IT tools.

Kovair’s Omnibus integration bus technology has major advantages which are not typically found in the vendor specific point tools or even a suite of tools. They are :

• Bus or Hub versus point to point integrations bringing considerable savings in development and maintenance costs.
• Supports multi-directional Synchronization and Federation.
• Data validation and transformation.
• Customizable Integration Rules & Data Mapping independent of Adapters – No rule hardcode in the Adapter.
• Augment Integrated Tools’ capabilities for Process & Traceability.
• Leverages existing tools investment for customers – no need to rip and replace tools.
• Synchronization of data and relations between lifecycle artifacts in different tools.
• Conflict Detection and Mediation.
• Supports integrations of multiple tools for the same functional area.
• Connects tools behind firewalls through SOA – needed for globally distributed team.

We have shown below our entire portfolio of all multi-vendor tools for which integrations are currently available or expected to be available over the next 90 days across all functions of the software development lifecycle. It shows a very compelling picture for you to explore and benefit from.

Read more about Omnibus Integrations Middleware at wikipedia.  
Also read more about Requirements management tool here.