Application Lifecycle Management - SDLC with ALM

SDLC with ALM 

Development is certainly the fundamental part of application lifecycle management. Once the business case is approved, the software development lifecycle begins.

If we expanded the SDLC parts of the Development line shown in the figure below, a modern process would probably show software development as a series of iterations. Each iteration would contain some requirements definition, some design, some development, and some testing. This iterative style of development isn’t always appropriate—some projects are still better done using more traditional methods—but it’s becoming the norm in many areas.

Once the SDLC process for version 1 of the application is complete, the application is deployed. For most applications, however, deployment doesn’t mark the end of development. Instead, the application needs periodic updates, as shown in the figure, and perhaps one or more full SDLC efforts to create new versions, as in this example.

For some applications, the money spent on these updates and new versions can exceed the cost of the original development by a significant amount. Viewing ALM as synonymous with SDLC is just wrong—it leads to a misunderstanding of what’s really required to be successful in this area.

Pic 1. Application Lifecycle Framework