ALM Application Lifecycle Management White Paper Out-of-Date; Out-of-Touch The Business Case for ALM Transformation
Executive summary: The Business Case for Change Ultimately improve the quality and success of your software projects Transformation begins high in the organization with the decision to change -- to break out of the status quo and turn Application Lifecycle Management into a strategic advantage. A common Application Lifecycle Management platform provides the benefits enterprises need today real time visibility and traceability, collaboration across stakeholders and process automation that leads to improved quality, time to market and business agility. Successful development platforms must be flexible to accommodate a mix of technologies, stakeholders and development methods (Agile, waterfall or hybrids), but an iterative and integrated approach delivers the software project at a competitive pace. In order to efficiently bring quality software that meets the needs of the market, organizations need: Dramatically Improved Business Agility: Automatic handoffs and integration from the business team to the development team, empowers management at all levels to respond quickly and adapt to changing business requirements. Business Agility includes scalable traceability among all of the stakeholders in the enterprise including those responsible for requirements, source code, builds, tests, lab management and defects. Unparalleled Visibility and Traceability: Improved visibility into the application lifecycle enables stakeholders to perform accurate estimation and adjust release schedules. With the right solution, stakeholders can easily trace which requirements belong to which source code, which source code checkin belongs to which defects, which defects belong to which test cases and so on. This level of visibility and traceability facilitate compliance with ever increasing regulations. Scalable Stakeholder Collaboration: Are you limited by the current generation tools optimized for workgroups, not the enterprise? Project teams are getting up and running using a combination of vendor, open source, home-grown tools and integration scripts. Replace fractured tools and data that are costly to maintain and isolate teams and projects. End-to-end Application Modernization and Rationalization strategy to become more competitive and better positioned to respond to change. In this CollabNet white paper, we will share more than ten years of experience in: - Planning for successful change - Key recommendations for mitigating risk - Eight requirements for a smooth transition - Real Continuous Innovation, and why you need it - Best Practices for a successful ALM Transformation ALM Transformation White Paper Copyright 2011 CollabNet Inc., 2
NOT TOOLS; TECHNOLOGY THAT TRANSFORMS Just as technology drives your business, technology can drive best practice and provide the controls needed in the flow of your business to insure that quality applications are delivered on time and on budget. But if this environment is fractured, introduction of new technology adds nothing more than cost and complexity; a more universal platform needs to be established. The new platform should support the specialized workspace and tools that enable reliable and continual improvement while mitigating risk. IT Management looks to consider adoption schemes that have minimal negative impact to the business, productivity of the user, and the satisfaction of the endcustomer. They chose a platform that could tie it all together even the groups still on legacy systems and dependent on historical data. The examination of a business s application portfolio will always surface the core systems that drive the company s strategy for growth and differentiation in their market. And looking deeper into these critical applications and their stakeholders, you will find a collection of people with different goals, motivations, skills and work environments. The challenge in information technology transformation is how to: Ease users insecurity over change Provide a menu of solutions for a range of skills and needs Redesign processes for controlled continuous improvement Technical management may be trying to manage 100s of teams - each with their own tools, repository, procedures and deployment methods. A seamless migration to a new platform for application lifecycle management can be achieved through thoughtful planning and can actually help the process of transformation by helping the business decide what processes to retain and what to re-tool. A plan for successful change includes: Choosing an open service-oriented platform scalable and easy to integrate to stakeholders preferred tools Limiting the impact to end-users across roles through a common hub Re-visiting work flows -- strengthen and automate best practice Provide some level of access to historical data based on company culture and compliance Parallel build of new infrastructure most-mission critical apps last Onboard new staff and projects in the new environment institute best practice from day one Migration of workflows, artifacts and historical data rely on experts Partner with domain professionals for guidance and enablement -- for true independence CASE STUDY: A company s decision to move their hosted application management system in-house created the opportunity to physically break away from legacy thinking. The business case was cost savings and to achieve a faster velocity in enhancing the key decision support systems running the business. They chose a platform that could tie it all together even the groups still on legacy systems and dependent on historical data. ALM Transformation White Paper Copyright 2011 CollabNet Inc., 3
SITUATION ANALYSIS: RISK MANAGEMENT Change Management covers the span of an application s life from concept to build to release. A process that includes stakeholders across the organization distributed among disparate small groups, often with no central person or group consistently managing build/release and quality assurance for these applications. There are points of risks throughout the application lifecycle. It can start with miscommunication of requirements, the lack of visibility or just the lack of change controls. In legacy environments, there may be workflows and version management systems but no way to control when a developer can change code. Unknown changes can be injected into production; good commits may be skipped or over-written; and changes not ready for production are promoted. It is not hard to identity these environments. The inefficiencies surface when you realize how much time is spent firefighting and scrambling remotely to fix things. If the core development environment limits the branching, merging and updating of application code, it also limits the ability to do automated promotion and to continuously release quality application enhancements. Without a Primary technical goals & requirements in transformation and migration Facilitate compliance and auditability o Establish templates for common processes used across the enterprise o Provide secure role based access controls that are centrally managed Consolidate all application development teams on one tool set to: o Reduce the number of applications o Enable common skill set through use of popular open source tools o Provide consistent reporting for IT management, business partners, and auditors. o Provide uniform project request, workflow tools and processes End tool, system or process dependence forced by closed architectures o Provide more options for best of breed tools for specialized tasks o Reduce dependence on legacy vendors for any single service o Lessen dependence on skill sets unique to a specific vendor s tools o Re-align company with common industry tools and commodity skills robust process, the business is at risk and limiting their option for growth. As most businesses are seeing an increase in new applications or in the size, complexity and dispersion of users and team members, these same factors always increase risk. The motivation to transform may be instigated by one or more legacy vendors. Are you being forced to upgrade, to add fixes to fill gaps for decade-old tools? Your developers may already be reaching out to open source solutions that do not require financial approval to gain a more agnostic and flexible architecture. Are business and technology power users building light-weight composite (Mashups) applications -- without governance and controlled deployment -- as short-term fixes to weaknesses in the existing infrastructure? All because the legacy systems from the 70s and 80s were never ALM Transformation White Paper Copyright 2011 CollabNet Inc., 4
designed to meet the challenges of today or take advantage of the breakthroughs in technology. RELIABLE AND CONTINUAL INNOVATION Plan, develop, build, release, deploy. CollabNet sees the need for safe, predictable and controlled change as the driving force for more robust build solutions. Source Code Management (SCM) systems and processes are an essential part of how you communicate both in and about code between developers and to stakeholders. Using an integrated change management system across your enterprise is the only way to safely share and reuse code and other artifacts created during your application lifecycle. Automation and the elimination of manually scripted process establish a reliable and repeatable process, regardless of development language or operating system. An integrated ALM platform, from development through deployment, gives you the ability to track changes, and have a central place to backup and recover the business assets that make up your applications. Continuous Integration (CI) is a cornerstone of efficient and effective build and release management that can help software development teams deliver software more reliably and frequently with less risk. Continuous Deployment is an advanced strategy of making major feature/function releases on a more frequent basis. Reliable and continual innovation can: Improve Software Quality and Reduce Risk: Continuous feedback to the software development team so they have transparent visibility into the real-time state of software projects and builds. Teams gain an understanding of development tools that can be integrated into their build process giving them insight into areas of build, testing and deployment. Increase Team Productivity: Eliminate manual scripts and automate common software development process such as build, test and inspection to minimize error-prone activities to achieve improved traceability and reliability so that software development teams can spend more time on value-added activities versus repetitive activities. Audit Matching Source to Binaries: Confirm with absolute confidence what artifacts were used to create your production binaries. Eliminate the guess work associated with tracing a binary back to the source code used in the creation. Accelerate and Streamline: Software builds can often be slow creating bottlenecks in the development process. Improve the software build to deploy process through massive parallelization of the build to deploy stream. High-Quality Deployable Software: At any given time CI ensures that your software is always ready to be deployed in a consistent manner. This reduces the effort of integrating software at release time, thus software deployment becomes a non-event. Expert Analysis, Evaluation and Recommended Roadmap: By leveraging expertise in build and release management, your software development team becomes more effective and reduce software delivery time to market. You should be provided a roadmap to help you future-proof your investment to meet changing needs. ALM Transformation White Paper Copyright 2011 CollabNet Inc., 5
Enabling a CI environment means you need to have a build process that is consistent and robust even with 100s of development teams and 1000s of projects that require different languages and platforms. ADOPTION AND ACCEPTANCE CURVE From your packaged financial applications to web-based customer service to volume transaction processing, all development environments must be considered and treated as equal in importance. Not just for the integrity of the applications that run the business, but for low friction adoption by all. An open architecture allows all development environments to be the center of each developer s world. And even in serving distributed teams, this is possible with the right combination of services and controls. Whether.Net developers, JAVA developers, database developers, analytic scientists, COBOL mainframe engineers or the guy who maintains the command-line shell scripts, all are provided equal access to development services and leave their preferred work environment untouched. A deep integration between a code repository and trackers to create workflows keep the environment safe with audit trails and associations to connect the work. Requirements to consider for smooth transition 1. Configure automated workflows to support a common request process across businesses and applications to implement process automation and enforcement. 2. Identify manually scripted processes that can be automated. Manual build and deploy scripts will impede establishing repeatability and standards across the enterprise. 3. Organize Application projects by line-of-business or business area to simplify business participation in the standard request process. 4. Store all applications source code in centralized (such as Subversion) repositories to enable consistent traceability between requests and the resulting changes. 5. Integrate the software build process into the centralized source repository ensuring that no items are used in the creation of binaries that are not managed under centralized control. 6. Implement IT Tasks to abstract the business facing requests from the resulting development tasks, enabling better tracking of development activities. 7. Standardize core request processes across Application Development Groups for consistent workflow, terms, approvals, permissions, roles and even the set-up of projects. 8. Provide Application Development groups dedicated projects to allow for group and team level collaboration, reporting and tracking. 9. Migration may include integration between new and the existing change management systems to facilitate ease of use and process enforcement. 10. Implement a technology-independent automated build solution (such as OpenMake Meister) to provide traceability within a common, yet flexible release management process. 11. Consider and consolidate quality and deployment standards that may already be in place for requirements and defects reporting and tracing. 12. Ensure that test, stage and production environments are maintained in the same state to ensure that builds that are successful in one area work all the way to production. 13. Ensure that parallel builds can be done across development to production supporting different versions of the build according to the lifecycle stage. Start the transition with new projects to lessen the impact on deliverables that are critical to the business. These new projects should have a well-defined onboarding process that enables one to get a project up and running quickly. A new person joining the team should be able to start with a set of tools, and then check out source code ALM Transformation White Paper Copyright 2011 CollabNet Inc., 6
and make a change on their first day. The process of making this possible will also make your deployment model more robust. Once the method for starting up new projects is established, and the first few are brought on board and working, then one can consider the rest of the application portfolio. When looking at these existing projects some criteria for setting priorities should be considered: 1. Stakeholder s openness to change. 2. Amount of pain that existing technology is causing the team. 3. Required training in new processes that will be needed to effect the change. 4. Release schedule of team -- how frequent, how flexible? 5. The overall impact of application release schedule to the business. SUMMARY: GUIDANCE AND ENABLEMENT A large financial institution with 100s of development teams was able to move from a 20 year-old system to a web-based open architecture serving hundreds of projects and their cross-functional teams. While in transition, they have continual synchronization between the old and new environments for access to historical data and artifacts until users reach a comfort level. A fast-growing company, they can now onboard a new developer in one hour to all the systems services and processes. Key decision-support applications development and their processes are running in parallel on the old and new platforms for validation over time. Best Practice for Change: Choose a vendor solution that demonstrates their domain expertise in complex development and the services for guidance and enablement. Ask for a Proof of Concept design of your workflows do some discovery of the current work flows and allow validation at a high level of how this maps into your new environment without excessive customization. Examine Continuous Integration processes and then follow by Implementation workshop Achieve a level of comfort without shocking developers or key business stakeholders who have a low tolerance for development complexity. Create a timeline of what it would take to bring initial teams and projects over. Request a Statement of Work with a mix of guidance (lead the discovery process) and enablement (transfer of knowledge). Re-build an application environment for better control and quality of core applications Institute best practice in change management Gain better risk management Respond to company growth Rely on a more robust development and deployment environment ALM Transformation White Paper Copyright 2011 CollabNet Inc., 7
ALM Transformation White Paper Copyright 2011 CollabNet Inc., 8
About CollabNet CollabNet leads the industry in Agile application lifecycle management (Agile ALM) in the Cloud. The CollabNet TeamForge ALM platform, CollabNet Subversion software configuration management (SCM) solution, and ScrumWorks project and program management software enable teams using any environment, methodology, and technology to increase productivity by up to 50% and to reduce the cost of software development by up to 80%. The company also offers training, including Certified ScrumMaster training, software development process improvement services, and an innovative community management approach to driving enterprise development success. As the founder of the open source Subversion project, CollabNet has collaborative development for distributed teams in its DNA. For more information, visit www.collab.net About OpenMake Software OpenMake Software is the Build Management Authority, providing enterprise scale continuous integration, distributed workflow, deployment and dependency based software build to release control. These solutions enable customers to leverage cloud environments, reduce software development cycle times, increase developer productivity, and provide management with actionable audit and traceability reports. Over 100,000 users at 400 companies worldwide use its two principal products, Mojo and Meister. Mojo provides a scalable distributed platform for continuous integration and workflow processing. Meister adds dependency-based standardization, acceleration, and audit capabilities to the build and deployment management process. OpenMake also provides expert consulting to assist customers in implementing SCM, build, test and deploy processes. For more information, visit www.openmakesoftware.com For an in-depth Discussion and Demo: Contact CollabNet +1 (888) 779-9793 or OpenMake +1 (800) 359-8049 Or send email to ALM Transformation ALM Transformation White Paper Copyright 2011 CollabNet Inc., 9
COLLABNET SERVICES ADDENDUM GUIDANCE AND ENABLEMENT Services offered by CollabNet to guide you through your ALM transformation CollabNet Continuous Integration Applied Workshop Service Continuous Integration is a cornerstone of efficient and effective build and release management that can help software development teams deliver software more reliably and frequently with less risk. CollabNet Continuous Integration Applied Workshop Service is a comprehensive package for organizations of any size that require a deeper understanding of how CI can be utilized within their software development lifecycle. This workshop is delivered by a CollabNet consultant; experienced experts in the field of build and release management. By leveraging our expertise we will help your software development team become more effective in CI and reduce software delivery time to market. Our expert will also provide a roadmap to help you future-proof your investment in CI. Subversion SCM Applied Workshop This five-day engagement includes a two-day onsite workshop (with architects, configuration managers, and senior software engineers) that aligns the organization's software development process to its use of Subversion. During the workshop, use cases and software development processes are formulated and mapped into Subversion best practices. At the end of the workshop, recommendations on how to organize the company's software development processes using Subversion are provided in a document. CollabNet's industry-leading Subversion curriculum is based on years of experience facilitating the adoption of Subversion in the enterprise. Subversion for Developers Subversion for Developers (standard) covers the complete spectrum of using Subversion for software development: from the typical development work cycle to mixed revisions to branching and merging operations. It explains Subversion's functionality on a conceptual level, offers practical demonstrations, and includes exercises for students to ensure they master the material. Subversion for Developers - Enterprise course covers advanced enterprise-level features like merge tracking interactive conflict resolution and sparse checkouts. This course also includes developer labs with hands on exercise. Subversion for Administrators (Standard) is targeted at engineers who are responsible for configuring and managing Subversion repositories and servers. Server configuration, repository layout, strategies for backup and recovery, and migration from legacy systems are discussed through examples. Subversion for Administrators - Advanced covers server configuration, repository layout, strategies for backup and recovery, and migration from legacy systems. This course also includes advanced topics such as: repository management, troubleshooting and application integrations. ALM Platform Implementation Workshop A CollabNet Consultant will assess your organization s current development processes and tools. Conduct group interview sessions with your organization s development leaders/subject matter experts Determine and confirm your organization s best practices for development Map your organization s best development practices into CollabNet TeamForge structure Create a project template that can be used for creating new and newly on-boarded development projects ALM Transformation White Paper Copyright 2011 CollabNet Inc., 10
TRANSFORMATION AND MIGRATION Collaboration Management CollabNet provides dedicated, practical mentoring, advice, and guidance on rolling out CollabNet TeamForge and establishes strong adoption amongst development groups by using the processes and practices defined during deployment. CollabNet works closely with key stakeholders and the developer community to create and execute a plan for transforming software development within a distributed environment. Key focus areas include: Defining collaborative software development processes Forming adoption teams to drive adoption, growth, and support of the development community Coaching and training project owners Tracking clear and measurable site objectives Project Artifact Migrations CollabNet's artifact migration services include helping companies: Migrate tracker records such as defect and enhancement records from legacy systems into CollabNet TeamForge trackers Create the appropriate artifacts for receiving legacy records Perform the necessary field-mapping definitions Execute data migration in a test and production environment COLLABNET AND OPENMAKE SOFTWARE SERVICES Source Code Repository and Script Migrations CollabNet and OpenMake Software partner to counsel and to assist customers with migrating version control data from legacy systems into Subversion, including the migration of the black box manual scripts that rely heavily on these older systems into OpenMake Meister. These migration services include executing full history conversions from most legacy version control systems including CVS, PVCS, Dimensions and Perforce, as well as providing advice on migrating the build and deploy scripted procedures into automated Meister processes. Integration and Custom Consulting CollabNet and OpenMake Software's custom solutions include: Integrating CollabNet TeamForge with third-party tools and applications. Customizing CollabNet TeamForge, including developing enhancements. Generating reports customized to your specific business processes. Accelerating build to deployment processes using OpenMake Meister or OpenMake Mojo. Creating a audit trail for matching production binaries to Subversion managed source code. Improving build to deploy standards and procedures using a centralized, non-platform specific process. ALM Transformation White Paper Copyright 2011 CollabNet Inc., 11