7 Critical Benefits of Application Lifecycle Management
Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) is actually a hypernym that comprises several distinct disciplines traditionally regarded as unrelated to one another. It includes development, testing, ITIL service delivery, project management, requirements management, quality assurance (QA), and customer support. ALM tools are employed to render set standards for development teams to follow as they collaborate on workflows. The tools also facilitate an environment for automating software development and delivery.
What Makes Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) So Important
Simply put, ALM is critical for delivering quality releases on schedule and according to budget. It achieves this by helping developers set requirements and methodologies before deploying processes. Additionally, it allows them to adjust development processes while implementing adequate testing throughout. Most importantly, ALM helps everyone on the development team stay on the same page.
Benefits of Application Lifecycle Management
The most prolific companies in the world — whether they be fintech or e-commerce — deploy custom software or software updates quite regularly. To accomplish this level of capability and efficiency, enterprises need to devise a flawless strategy to manage their software development projects from beginning to end. This is where ALM comes in. Below, we explore the seven benefits of application lifecycle management.
1. Facilitates Real-Time Decision-Making
ALM allows organizations to make more competent determinations concerning their applications as they age. Features like real-time planning and version control (both of which can be found in most ALM tools) give team leaders an edge; they can quickly and decisively map out an application’s future so organizations can plan effectively, whether they deploy traditional waterfall or agile development projects. ALM is especially critical for informed decision-making when organizations implement interdependent projects with complex oversight requirements.
2. Improves Development Speed and Agility
In today’s evolving marketplace, it’s a constant battle for enterprises to stay ahead of the crowd. This is especially true when it comes to software and application development. ALM gives development teams the power to produce applications at the speed and agility required to remain competitive. It also offers proprietary source code management to align software development goals with organizational objectives.
3. Improves Quality and Compliance
ALM provides your developmental team with the tools needed to produce a high-quality software application. It effectively promotes quality through source code management and collaborative effort. When development teams and testers are out of the information loop, this can take a toll on the development process and affect the quality of the final product. Communication is particularly critical during the governance stage, which covers the plan and create phases in software development and information-technology operations (DevOps).
Governance is also known as the requirements definition and design stage, where one defines solution requirements. These requirements generally encompass everything from technology platform requirements to compliance regulations. Since this phase is where applications are designed based on such requirements, it’s essential to get this phase right to deliver optimum solutions for customers.
4. Helps Enterprises Plan More Efficiently
With ALM, teams can start projects with methodologies and precise estimations in place. It provides support in project management through resource planning. Particular tools are accessible depending on the requirements, whether it be traditional waterfall projects (where projects are developed in a linear approach) or agile development projects (where projects are developed through an iterative process).
5. Strengthens Testing Practices
ALM equips organizations with end-to-end application development and testing solutions. Application development necessitates strong intercommunications for development and testing, which results in up-to-date identification of issues as well as swift resolutions. Throughout the application development process, it’s vital to have a completely automated and secure framework that undergoes systematic daily testing. ALM automation eliminates integration dilemmas by enabling developers to combine their work seamlessly.
6. Enhances Employee Support and Consumer Satisfaction
Support is an indispensable component of ALM. In addition to that, ALM helps organizations release applications faster while maintaining customer satisfaction. It achieves this by integrating, adapting, and supporting the appropriate applications.
7.Provides Extensive Visibility Across the Project Lifecycle
Many development teams don’t have extensive visibility across the lifecycle of a project. ALM provides that visibility. It will enable you to know the number of requirements that have previously been satisfied — as well as how many remain. You will also know how far the application development has progressed and what has been tested. This keeps everyone up-to-date if or when things change.
Partner With Entrance Consulting to Deploy Application Lifecycle Management
Typical custom-built software application projects come with inherent challenges and risks. The team at Entrance Consulting strives to deliver the most reliable final product. And, our application lifecycle management tools highlight our commitment to agile development. For example, Entrance has introduced a new ALM tool called Team Foundation Services (TFS) that allows clients to get back into the “driver’s seat” when it comes to implementing ALM practices. To learn more about this application lifecycle management tool and how Entrance Consulting can help your organization, speak to a highly-trained expert today.
Git and GitFlow
Git is used in software development projects of every kind. It has almost completely replaced earlier source code management tools such as CVs and Subversion. At the same time, it uses concepts that are difficult to understand.
Learning to use its many commands takes time, even for skilled developers. This piece doesn’t try to be a tutorial on using Git. Several good introductions for users are available. Here we’ll look at what Git does and how it organizes code that developers are working on. This will include a look at the GitFlow paradigm, a way of organizing Git workflows which have become widely popular. Anyone who wants to learn to use Git or understand it from a manager’s viewpoint needs to learn these concepts before plunging deeply into the commands.
The Basics of Git
The most important point is that Git is a distributed repository. Subversion and other earlier tools used a single, centralized repository. All developers checked their code out from the repository, made changes, and checked it back in. The repository allowed multiple branches, but they all resided on a central server.
Git lets each developer have their own copy of the remote repository. They clone it from the remote repository, make changes, and commit to their local copy. When they’re ready, they push their version of the repository to the remote. At any time, they can pull from the remote so that they’re up to date with changes that others have committed.
The local repository is a full copy of the remote one or one or more of its branches. It contains the full history of the branches, not just the latest version. A developer can create a new local branch, work in it, and merge back to the main branch before pushing to the remote repository.
Beginning to Use Git
When starting to use Git, a developer should customize it with the git config command. At a minimum, the configuration should have the developer’s name and email address, so that any changes that are checked in will be identifiable. It should also be set to ignore bookkeeping files which the operating system creates, so they won’t accidentally be added.
Developers need to know some basic commands to do this much. GUI tools for Git are available, but anyone who’s serious about it knows how to use it from the command line. Some of the first commands they’ll learn are:
- Git clone — Creates a local copy of a repository, and sets it up so that the developer can push and pull between the local repository and the remote.
- Fetch — Updates the local repository to match the remote.
- Pull — Updates the local repository and the working files.
- Push — Sends changes from the local repository to the remote. The changes are merged only if a “fast forward” merge is possible, meaning no one has made independent changes in the meantime. The preferred approach is to merge with the latest changes before pushing.
The Three Trees
A developer’s machine contains three places where files from Git are stored. They’re called the “three trees.” Understanding them avoids a lot of confusion in how Git processes changes.
- The HEAD in the local repository. The developer is always working in a particular branch, called the HEAD, at any moment. It contains files as they were pulled or fetched from the remote, or as the developer last committed them. A push will send the latest HEAD changes to the remote.
- The index. It stands between the working directory and the HEAD, and beginners tend to forget it’s there and not understand why their changes aren’t being committed. The developer needs to add files to the index before committing them.
- The working directory. The files here are available to edit, compile, or run. The developer can make any amount of changes, test them, and throw them away without affecting the index or HEAD.
To move edited files into the index, the developer uses the git add command. Only then is it possible to move them to the HEAD, using git commit.
GitFlow
Managing source code for regular releases requires being able to work on features separately from one another and not letting versions collide. The GitFlow process is a popular way to do this. A team can use it without any extra tools, though a package of extensions is available to simplify its steps.
The central repository uses two permanent branches. One is the usual Master; the other is the Develop branch. The Master branch is used for nothing except the production code. A code is checked into Develop before going to Master.
Each feature which developers are working on gets its own branch. They branch off from Develop, not from Master. The work on the feature is done in its own branch, then it’s merged into Develop.
Moving on to Production
When it’s time to move to production, a release branch is forked from the Develop branch. It shouldn’t get any major new code, but it’s where any remaining bug fixes and documentation enhancements will take place. When it’s ready to go, it’s merged back into Develop as well as Master. The current state of Master is tagged with a name of the form “release-x.y”. This is the code that goes to production. New work on the next release can then start by pulling code from Develop.
Sometimes it’s necessary to fix code after it’s been released. In the GitFlow model, this is called a “hotfix.” Developers can create a hotfix branch for this purpose. Only hotfixes branch directly from Master. After making the necessary changes, they check the hotfix back into Develop and Master. The fixed version is tagged with a patch release number, using the form “hotfix-x.y”.
Developers can make feature branches, but only team leaders should create release branches. Leaders should also handle all merging into Develop and Master.
GitFlow isn’t the only workflow that’s possible with Git, but it’s effective in coordinating large projects.
Learn More About Git
Authoritative documentation on Git is available on git-scm.com. A free ebook, videos, and pages on individual commands are available. The help pages on GitHub are another useful resource, especially for developers using GitHub as their primary repository. Codecademyoffers a free introductory course.
Managers who deal with software teams need to understand the language of Git, even if they don’t personally use it. Knowing what it’s all about will help in understanding and planning development and release processes.
There’s always more to learn. The team at Entrance Consulting puts on regular “brown bag” lunch sessions where a team member leads a discussion on a chosen topic. The subject could be tools, languages, or the art of dealing with emergencies. Everyone contributes from their own experience. Participants talk not only about the technology but the real-world issues involved in using it. This makes us keep our own skills sharp, so we can better serve our clients.
Choosing A Test Suite in Microsoft Team Foundation Server (TFS)
There are three types of test suites used in Microsoft Team Foundation Server (TFS) for organizing test cases: regular, query-based, and requirements-based suites. Each has its advantages and disadvantages, and though none of them are perfect, using requirements-based suites as your primary means of test case organization allows for the best combination of traceability and usability.
Regular test suites are essentially folders; they can contain either test cases or additional test suites. They’re the most straightforward way to organize your tests, since their contents are not dependent on queries or on the test cases being linked to work items, and you can create the test cases directly within the suite. However, there’s nothing automatic with regular test suites. Any test cases created outside of the suite must be manually added, and test cases created in the suite must be manually linked to the work items that they test. While certainly good for basic organization, they have limited integration with the rest of TFS and no automatic organization or insertion of test cases.
To create a query-based test suite, you define a TFS query, and the resulting suite will contain any matching test cases. These are great for finding a subset of test cases that you want to run on a regular basis – for instance, finding all test cases in a given sprint. However, when using query-based suites, you cannot create new tests directly within the suite, nor can you remove test cases from the suite without changing the query or test cases. If you want to create a new test case for the suite, you must ensure it is created in a way that allows it to be captured by the query, which can be problematic if multiple people are creating test cases. Furthermore, if a test case is covered by multiple queries in the same plan, it will show up multiple times when you run tests, and will affect the test results accordingly.
Requirements-based suites are a good middle ground between regular test suites and query-based test suites, though they’re not without their flaws. When creating a requirements-based suite, you select a work item, and the suite contains all test cases that are linked to it. Unlike a query-based suite, you can create a test case directly within the suite, and unlike a regular suite, the test case will automatically be linked to what it tests. Additionally, any linked test cases created elsewhere in TFS will automatically display here, making it easy to ensure all work items are being tested. However, since you have a test suite for each item, it’s easy to end up with a large number of suites, each with only one or two test cases – though this can be mitigated somewhat by using regular suites as folders to organize them. Additionally, you’re likely to end up with duplicate test cases in your test plan, as any test case that covers more than one work item in your test plan will appear in multiple suites.
Even with their flaws, however, I find requirements-based suites to be the most useful. While regular suites are good for basic organization and query-based suites are good for finding a specific set of test cases to run, requirements-based suites provide a good mix of both to allow you to manage and execute your test cases. When organized into folders using regular suites, it’s not too difficult to manage a large number of requirements-based suites. As for duplicate test cases, they can be managed by marking the duplicate cases to not be run and by ensuring that your test cases are divided appropriately among your testers. Ultimately, if having a high level of traceability is a priority for your team in cases such as custom application development, using requirements-based suites is the best way to achieve that goal while keeping your test cases easy to manage.
4 Unique Challenges for Testing Single Page Applications
Watch out for these four key recurring issues to prevent a bad user experience when you’re testing single page applications.
First, you need some sort of loading indicator for your pages.
You cannot let your users stare at an unchanging page for several seconds without any indication that clicking a link did something. In addition, if a process within a page is going to take more than a second to complete, it should have a loading indicator as well. If, for example, you are sorting or filtering a large list of items, you need an indication to the user that something is happening and that the application hasn’t frozen.
Second, watch out for pages loading on top of each other.
For instance, if you click a link to one page while another page is already loading, by default, they’ll both continue to load. This means that once one page finishes loading and displays to the user, the other page will continue loading and override it once it finishes. When this happens, you can easily end up viewing the wrong page. This can occur with elements within a page as well. You can see an example of this behavior if you use Microsoft’s Team Foundation Server work item queries; if you click two saved queries in a row, the first one to finish loading will show its work items in the results area, but once the second finishes loading, the results section will, without warning, switch to showing the second query’s results instead.
Third, pay attention to dynamic areas within otherwise static portions of a page, such as a header.
For example, if you have a shopping cart with an item count, you have to make sure that every user action that changes the contents of the shopping cart properly updates the item count in the header as well. Because the site isn’t refreshing every time you navigate to a new page, you can’t just save something in a database and expect the client to automatically update to match it. Additionally, you have to consider the desired behavior if these actions fail; in this example, if you try to add an item to your cart that is no longer available, in addition to giving the user an error, the shopping cart total should remain unchanged.
Fourth, as a tester, make sure that you are clearing your browser cache between builds, or that you are always using private windows to test.
Due to the nature of single page applications, caching can be particularly aggressive. This can lead to all sorts of problems, particularly when confirming that bugs were fixed. Of course, you also need to ensure that caching issues do not cause problems for users in production; you cannot expect your users to remember to clear their caches every time you give them an update!
With these four aspects of single page applications in mind, you will be well on your way to delivering a quality user experience.
There Will Be Bugs! | Application Development Blog Series
Best practices for minimizing the impact and mitigating costs associated with fixing software bugs
First of all, let’s clear something up: what is a bug? A bug is a flaw in software that results in the application not functioning as intended, and is something that is theoretically preventable.