Agile Application Lifecycle Management (ALM)

Application Lifecycle Management
Dealing with Complexity
Agile ALM
Jurgen Appelo
jurgen@noop.nl
Version 1
http://www.flickr.com/photos/poppacket/4290209522/

ALM: Dealing with Complexity
Can Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) work in an environment that grows ever more complex?
And how does this relate to the first Agile principle, which promotes “people over processes and tools?”

About the Author...

Typical software development
http://www.flickr.com/photos/futureshape/4000128011/

One small change
http://www.flickr.com/photos/laszlo-photo/1899390628/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/schanlaub/5102055360/
Rippling effects
everywhere

http://www.flickr.com/photos/mcfarlandmo/3275420128/
Endless
updates

Very tempting to take shortcuts
http://www.flickr.com/photos/jngelvezon/3544740238/

Or to
say
STOP!
We won’t change this.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/soamplified/4862757831/

The result is a big entangled mess
http://www.flickr.com/photos/hryckowian/2029393648/

Also called…
technical
technical
http://www.flickr.com/photos/kevinkrejci/3065365140/

Quasimodo software
heart of gold,
broken body
Image via Google Search

http://www.flickr.com/photos/steelmore/221737671/
And it doesn’t get easier…

Increasing number of technologies
http://www.flickr.com/photos/hinkelstone/2435823037/

Increasing levels of globalization
http://www.flickr.com/photos/foxspain/3219577797/

Increasing amount of customization
http://www.flickr.com/photos/pmiaki/4566582179/

Lehman’s Laws of Software Evolution
http://www.flickr.com/photos/pagedooley/1825685405/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/untitlism/2609684221/
Lehman’s 1st Law
Continuing Change
“A system must be continually adapted or else it becomes progressively less capable of satisfying its users.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lehman's_laws_of_software_evolution

http://www.flickr.com/photos/hinkelstone/2765597758/
Lehman’s 2nd Law
Increasing Complexity
“As a system evolves its complexity increases unless work is done to reduce it.”

http://www.flickr.com/photos/jurvetson/2323537118/
Lehman’s 3rd Law
Self-Regulation
“The system evolution process is self-regulating with product and process measures closely following a normal distribution.”

http://www.flickr.com/photos/zyllan/4880446208/
Lehman’s 4th Law
Organizational Stability
“The average activity rate (maintenance) in an evolving system is invariant over its lifetime.”

http://www.flickr.com/photos/kevinpoh/3586321697/
Lehman’s 5th Law
Conservation of Familiarity
“As a system evolves all people involved with it must maintain mastery of its content and behavior to achieve satisfactory evolution.”

http://www.flickr.com/photos/randysonofrobert/376221775/
Lehman’s 6th Law
Continuing Growth
“The functional content of a system must be continually increased to maintain user satisfaction over its lifetime.”

http://www.flickr.com/photos/reinante/4413913423/
Lehman’s 7th Law
Declining Quality
“The quality of a system will decline unless it is rigorously maintained and adapted to operational environment changes.”

http://www.flickr.com/photos/pixel_addict/465394708/
Lehman’s 8th Law
Feedback System
“Evolution processes constitute complex feedback systems and must be treated as such to achieve significant improvement over any reasonable base.”

How can we ever deal with all this change?
http://www.flickr.com/photos/pagedooley/2845763884/

Application
Lifecycle
Management
(ALM)
http://www.flickr.com/photos/denisecarbonell/3923601326/

Definition(s)
“Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) is a continuousprocess of managing the life of an application through governance, development and maintenance.”
Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Application_lifecycle_management

Definition(s)
“ALM is a set of disciplines that together govern the process of turning business ideas into software.”
“ALM changing to meet development organizations' needs”

Definition(s)
“Any tools, technologies, or techniques that attempt to connect and maintain connections between activities over the life of a piece of software – from the first glint in the glimmer of an executive's eye, through system retirement.”
“Just-enough application lifecycle management (ALM)”
http://searchsoftwarequality.techtarget.com/news/column/0,294698,sid92_gci1396258,00.html

ALM visualized in models, from bad…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:ALM.svg

…to absolutely terrible.
http://searchsoftwarequality.techtarget.com/news/article/0,289142,sid92_gci1259517_mem1,00.html

http://www.flickr.com/photos/jeanlouis_zimmermann/570332025/
Conway’s Law
“Organizations which design systems are constrained to produce designs which are copies of the communication structures of these organizations.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway's_Law

http://www.flickr.com/photos/eirikref/727551264/
ALM 1.0
development
testing
Separated disciplines
Silos of information
Fragile integration
design

http://www.flickr.com/photos/sudhamshu/4379880762/
ALM 2.0
management
development
design
testing
project management
Single repository
Roles and connections
“One truth”

http://www.flickr.com/photos/f-oxymoron/5005673112/
CanALM 2.0 handle complexity

Complex Systems
“A complex system is a system composed of interconnected parts that as a whole exhibit one or more properties (behavior) not obvious from the properties of the individual parts.”
Sometimes called the sciences of complexity (plural)
http://cfpm.org/pub/users/bruce/thesis/chap4.pdf

General Systems Theory
Study of relationships between elements
Ludwig von Bertalanffy
(biologist)
1901-1972
Autopoiesis (how a system constructs itself)
Identity (how a system is identifiable)
Homeostatis (how a system remains stable)
Permeability (how a system interacts with its environment)

Cybernetics
Study of regulatory systems
Norbert Wiener
(mathematician)
1894-1964
Goals (the intention of achieving a desired state)
Acting (having an effect on the environment)
Sensing (checking the response of the environment)
Evaluating (comparing current state with system’s goal)

Dynamical Systems Theory
Study of system behavior
Stability (stable states versus unstable states)
Attractors (systems getting sucked into stable states)

Game Theory
Study of co-adapting systems
John von Neumann
(mathematician)
1903-1957
Competition versus cooperation
Zero sumgames versus non-zero sum games
Strategies(including evolutionary stable strategies)

Evolutionary Theory
Study of evolving systems
Charles Darwin
(naturalist)
1809-1882
Population (more than one instance)
Replication (mechanism of making new instances)
Variation (differences between instances)
Heredity (differences copied from existing instances)
Selection (environment imposes selective pressure)

Chaos Theory
Study of unpredictable systems
Edward Lorenz
(meteorologist)
1917-2008
Strange attractors (chaotic behavior)
Sensitivity to initial conditions (butterfly effect)
Fractals (scale-invariance)

And more...
Study of all kinds of systems
Dissipative systems (spontaneous pattern-forming)
Cellular automata (complex behavior from simple rules)
Genetic algorithms (adaptive learning)
Social network analysis (propagation of information)

The Body of Knowledge of Systems
Complex systems theory is the study of complex systems using multiple system theories

Simplicity: A New Model
Simple = structure is easily understandable
Complicated = structure is very hard to understand
Ordered = behavior is fully predictable
Complex = behavior is somewhat predictable
Chaotic = behavior is very unpredictable
Simplification= making something better understandable
Linearization= making something more predictable

Structure-Behavior Model
Complex and complicated seen as different dimensions
http://www.noop.nl/2010/09/simplicity-a-new-model.html

9 lessons from
complexity thinking
http://www.flickr.com/photos/stevon/3577915624/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/arcticpuppy/2943901683/
Focus on people
motivation
competence

http://www.flickr.com/photos/linhngan/3101950593/
Focus on relationships
communication
collaboration

Expect change
resilience
robustness
http://www.flickr.com/photos/jenny-pics/3602368875/

Support self-organization
growth
alignment
http://www.flickr.com/photos/oth313/2084783266/

Embrace emergence
no constructionism
no predictions
http://www.flickr.com/photos/hamed/428063513/

Embrace diversity
adaptability
innovation
http://www.flickr.com/photos/meanestindian/478935037/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/zooboing/4743616313/
Support decentralization
delegation empowerment

http://www.flickr.com/photos/pagedooley/4099585916/in/photostream/
Expect non-linearity
unpredictability, unknowns

Heed “incompressibility”
All models are wrong, some are useful
http://www.flickr.com/photos/speckham/3885641714/

People
Relationships
Change
Self-organization
Emergence
Diversity
Decentralization
Non-linearity
Incompressibility
One approach to bind them all…
http://www.flickr.com/photos/gladius/2332020850/

Agile Software Development
http://www.flickr.com/photos/sidelong/2909952599/

Definition(s)
“Agile software development is a group of software development methodologies based on iterative and incremental development, where requirements and solutions evolve through collaboration between self-organizing, cross-functional teams.”
Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agile_software_development

Definition(s)
“An iterative and incremental (evolutionary) approach to software development which is performed in a highly collaborative manner by self-organizing teams within an effective governance framework with "just enough" ceremony that produces high quality solutions in a cost effective and timely manner which meets the changing needs of its stakeholders.”
Agile Modeling
http://www.agilemodeling.com/essays/agileSoftwareDevelopment.htm

Adoption of Agile around the world
http://www.sdtimes.com/link/34936

Agile + ALM
similarities
information sharing
better collaboration
increased quality
higher productivity
http://www.flickr.com/photos/ananth/279721111/

Agile vs. ALM: differences
people vs. tools
practices vs. techniques
http://www.flickr.com/photos/thebusybrain/2492945625/

Agile ALM
the best of both,
using complexity thinking
http://www.flickr.com/photos/batega/1865482908/

“The typical project is a collection of ideas held in the minds of the people on the project. […]A project is not the sum of all of its documents or even its code. A great deal of the context of a project lies in its participants.”
Matt Heusser
“Just-enough application lifecycle management (ALM)”

7 tips
for Agile ALM

1. High-Bandwidth Communication
ALM tools should support high-bandwidth communication, and should not needlessly replace person-person communication with person-tool communication.
Example: facilitation and storage of photos, audio, video.

2. Agile Best Practices
ALM tools must natively support all common Agile practices.
Example: user stories, acceptance testing, iterative planning, continuous flow, unit testing, refactoring, automated builds, continuous integration, etc…

3. Bottom-Up Infrastructure
The ALM infrastructure must be selected, built and maintained by the team(s) themselves. Nothing should be mandated by those who don’t have to work with it.
Example: a team can select its own favorite automatic build system or Agile planning tools.

4. Multi-Vendor Approach
A healthy ALM strategy will allow for multiple vendors of tools. The benefits of specialization (of tools) often outweighs the cost of integration. There is no “single truth”.
Example: use Visual Studio Team System except source control.

5. Distributed Information
ALM tools should aim for accessibility. The goal is collaboration, not centralization. Information should be radiated, not concentrated.
Example: status updates on whiteboard and in task tracking tool.

6. Agile Improvement
Modeling of processes is a form of prediction, and thus unreliable. Allow for emergent design of the ALM infrastructure. Grow it in an Agile way.
Example: use a continuous improvement backlog for the ALM infrastructure.

7. Adaptable Tools
ALM tools must be extensible, customizable and adaptable, so that they can grow together with the project.
Example: open API’s, web services, plug-ins, widgets, macros, etc.

Agile ALM
High-Bandwidth Communication
Agile Best Practices
Bottom-up Infrastructure
Multi-Vendor Approach
Distributed Information
Agile Improvement
Adaptable Tools
http://www.flickr.com/photos/untitlism/2603959306/

Sources
Application lifecycle management (Wikipedia)
Mea culpa, ALM toolmakers say (SD Times)
http://www.sdtimes.com/link/31952
ALM changing to meet development organizations' needs (SearchSoftwareQuality)
http://searchsoftwarequality.techtarget.com/news/article/0,289142,sid92_gci1259517_mem1,00.html
Application Lifecycle Management Gets Agile (ITBusinessEdge)
http://www.itbusinessedge.com/cm/blogs/vizard/application-lifecycle-management-gets-agile/?cs=39865
What is Agile ALM? (Ezine Articles)
http://ezinearticles.com/?What-is-Agile-ALM?&id=3948403
Agile ALM – Opposites Attract (CM Crossroads)
http://www.cmcrossroads.com/cm-journal-articles/13601-agile-alm-opposites-attract
What is the definition of Application Lifecycle Management (ALM)? (IT Knowledge Exchange)
http://itknowledgeexchange.techtarget.com/software-quality/what-is-the-definition-of-application-lifecycle-management-alm/

Sources
Just-enough application lifecycle management (ALM) (SearchSoftwareQuality)
ALM and Agile (RedMonk)
http://www.redmonk.com/cote/2006/12/04/alm-and-agile/
Top 7 Key Requirements of an Agile ALM Platform (Top7Business)
http://top7business.com/?id=15513
Does Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) add Value or Hinder the Adoption of Agile-Lean Product Development? (AgileJournal)
http://www.agilejournal.com/articles/columns/column-articles/3326-does-application-lifecycle-management-alm-add-value-or-hinder-the-adoption-of-agile-lean-product-development
What exactly is an ALM tool (SearchSoftwareQuality)
http://searchsoftwarequality.techtarget.com/expert/KnowledgebaseAnswer/0,289625,sid92_gci1523524,00.html
Getting Started with Agile ALM (Manning)
http://www.manning.com/huettermann/

This presentation was inspired by the works of many people, and I cannot possibly list them all. Though I did my very best to attribute all authors of texts and images, and to recognize any copyrights, if you think that anything in this presentation should be changed, added or removed, please contact me at jurgen@noop.nl.
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/3.0/

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Agile Application Lifecycle Management (ALM)

by Jurgen Appelo

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