Benefits of collaboration tools in ALM

The key to a successful software company is its ability to satisfy customer needs, through the

delivery of innovative and timely software solutions, that ease work flow, and give the

customer competitive advantage. Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) provides such

solutions by addressing the overall alignment and synchronization of business goals and IT

investment priorities. Using collaborative tools in ALM can help a team to execute a project

according to a plan and to gain control over a project. Tools are implemented to bridge the gap

between team members, provide full traceability between projects artifacts, and eliminate the

need for unnecessary documentation hassles. By integrating tools organizations achieve an end-

to-end ALM solution resulting in increased ROI and process improvement. Following are some

of the benefits of how an integrated ALM tools can benefit an organization.

Brings Visibility

Collaborative tools in ALM bring more transparency in an organization in their regular

business activities. The main purpose for using ALM tools is to help and execute a

project according to a plan and to gain control over a project. It is integrated to curtail

bottlenecks between the projects, provides full traceability between projects artifacts

and eliminates the need for unnecessary documentation hassles.

Ratify Best practice Processes

For an organization balancing ALL phases of the application lifecycle and automate the

best practices, integration is necessary. ALM tools helps to execute the processes and

achieve consistency, repeatability and predictability in planning, designing,

developing/configuring, testing, deploying, operating, and optimizing business

applications or any integration between the different phases with full treatability

between all project artifacts.

Collaboration

Selecting the right set of tools or integrated platform removes any major bottlenecks and

inefficiencies. This improves collaboration between stakeholders and distributed teams.

Proper sync of collaborative ALM tools and integration can ensures perfect synergy in

application development, as it provide transparency in the team activities.

Increase Team Productivity

Integration of the application lifecycle tool increases the efficiency level and the

productivity of individuals and as a team. It analyzes trends and implements metrics

based management best practices. It allows teams to collaborate more efficiently and

effectively, eliminating major hassles and project delays.

Customer Satisfaction

ALM tools integration such as Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and

helpdesk tools bring lucidity on the progress of an ongoing project. Using such tools

organizations can keep track of all customer related issues and the current status of any

projects.

Improve Work Quality

With the right ALM process, a team can identify the areas where they need to be more

proactive and accordingly select the right tools for the job. The key here is to make sure

the platform is flexible enough to fit the bill i.e. organization's process. An important

aspect that a team needs to consider is that these processes usually have many tacit rules;

it's not just what's written in the manuals. Proper integration of tools will improve the

overall work quality of the team.

Embracing Change

In any application development project changes are inevitable. Keeping track and

embracing change requires proper planning and execution. Organizations may find it a

tricky to keep all stakeholders in loop with the latest changes in application

development. Integration of ALM tools facilitates application development teams to

assess the impact of changes, automate change propagation and reduce reaction time.