AE Stories

In the end, Application Lifecycle Management helps you to transform business ideas in an efficient and predictable way. You, as an IT department, will be able to deliver what the business needs. Moreover, you will be able to do this on time and within the estimated budget. The ALM maturity assessment discussed in my previous post results in a clear overview of the current maturity level (per discipline) and a phased plan to increase the maturity of you ALM processes. In this post we will discuss the possible benefits of executing an ALM maturity increase plan (by using a concrete customer case).

In my previous post I have shown a number of possible pain patterns that you can experience if the maturity of your ALM processes is not adequate. In this post we will discuss a method that can be used to assess these processes and increase the ALM maturity in the areas where this is needed.

ALM

The actual goal of Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) is to transform a business idea into working software as efficiently as possible. The requirements need to be aligned with development to build applications that drive business objectives.

Your ALM processes should be managed as actual business processes because they create the predictability that the business is requesting.

In reality they are still considered to be an IT internal concern.

Pain patterns

Do you recognize any of the following pain patterns?

Ultimately, society as a whole and business in particular are all about relationships. Then, success - or in the more personal area, happiness - is measured by how well one can establish and maintain personal and long-lasting relationships.

Within the traditional business context, the primary relationship is usually seen to be that of a company with its customers. But let's turn this around:

The primary business relationship is that of a person with a company of his choice.

Back home after an inspiring and entertaining EA & BPM conference (EACBPM). There was way too much going on to wrap it up in a short blog post, but here are some themes that stuck with me after the talks and informal discussions.

Value proposition & strategy

An important part of enterprise and business architecture and business process management is about making the connection with corporate strategy and an enterprise’s value proposition. It will not surprise you that customer experience is playing an important role here. Thinking outside-in, stepping into the customer’s shoes and looking at his process instead of ours is a first step.