The software companies need to apply Lifecycle Management Tools because it offers more advantages than the Software Development Life Cycle. The Software Development Life Cycle includes the software development phases, but the Lifecycle Management Tools includes the process after the development of the software.
Requirements: The tool defines at the beginning of the process what are the requirements of the software. Requirements are the first and most important step of the process when the company or organization defines the objectives and scope of the software. The requirements define the resources and the estimated time to deliver the beta and finished version of the software. The benefit of this step is the definition of project costs, time and human requirements.
Design: The design step consist in the definition of the structure of the software, the database organization, the inputs and outputs of information, the level 0, 1 and 2 of the application, that is, the programmer, machine user interface. The benefit of this step is the definition of the software structure, used language and programming software.
Coding and configuration: The steps are the development of the software databases and interfaces with the user. The coding depends on of the requirements and previous design, defined in the first two steps of the application lifecycle management (Hüttermann, 2011).
Project Management: The Project Management is an overall step of the application lifecycle management process. The project management defines a program, a Gantt-chart and the work breakdown structure of the software project. The use of a project management approach inside the application lifecycle management guarantees a structured order of the development of the software avoiding delivery delays and resources waste.
Change Management: The change management is useful in the development of software by a numerous group of software programmers or when the software suite requires the development of different modules by different teams. A change management strategy requires that each programmer follows a common procedure for each change. The two most important principles to follow in the change management are two verify the latest version of the software, execute the change and communicate to the team. This step avoids disorder and reworks in the team.
After Development: The after development is the difference between the traditional software development life cycle. The application lifecycle management offers support to the software once it is available on the market and it is no longer used.
The Application Lifecycle Management offered in each step several benefits to the team that develops the software, but it brings the team overall security benefits as the following:
■ The identification in an early stage of configuration failures and vulnerabilities of the software, previous to the launch to the public.
■ The team is aware of engineering challenges due to required security controls to the client or regulatory requirements (NIST, 2008).
■ An effective approach to risk management. The use of project management tools by the application lifecycle management brings the benefit to foresee risk before the design and coding of the software (SD Elements, 2016).
■ The application lifecycle management generates documentation of important security decision, facilitating to the organization managers to track the security in each step of the software development.
■ Facilitates the decision making to the organization during the development of the software.
There are several software solutions available in the market that helps organizations to apply the application lifecycle management in their projects without the necessity to develop the application from scratch. Version One, Fujitsu Run My Process and Hewlett-Packard HP-ALM are the most convenient application lifecycle management solutions available in the market (Capterra, 2016).
Reference List
Capterra. (2016). Top Application Lifecycle Management Software Products. Retrieved from Capterra: http://www.capterra.com/application-lifecycle-management-software/?utf8=%E2%9C%93&review_stars=4&users=&commit=Filter+Results
Hüttermann, M. (2011). Agile Application Lifecycle Management. Greenwich, Connecticut: Manning Publications.
NIST. (2008). Security Considerations in the System Development Life Cycle. Retrieved from NIST: http://nvlpubs.nist.gov/nistpubs/Legacy/SP/nistspecialpublication800-64r2.pdf
SD Elements. (2016). Introducing Secure Application Lifecycle Management. Retrieved from SD Elements: https://www.sdelements.com/media/pdf/salm-whitepaper.pdf
