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Making IT Development Visible to Higher Business Management is Another Benefit of New Generation Application Lifecycle ManagementDUBLIN, Ireland --(Business Wire)-- Oct. 19, 2005 -- Many businesses find that commercial software fails to meet their exact needs, and that they have to either develop their own software in-house, or pay experts to do this task for them - and in either case, software development has to be done. However, software development projects have a very poor track record, and tend to be delivered late and/or fail to meet the expectations of the business and its management. The larger the project, the greater the difficulties that are reported after it fails - good examples of this include most Government software projects, which tend to run millions over budget and then underperform spectacularly. Research and Markets (http://www.researchandmarkets.com/reports/c26111) has announced the addition of Application Lifecycle Management - A Technology Evaluation and Comparison Report to their offering. This Report looks at the reasons why application development projects often go so badly wrong, and why so many efforts to correct predictable problems also fail. One of the most important reasons is that there is an enormous gap between the developers who work on application projects, and the managers who set the goals of the projects. Regardless of how good the technology may be that is being used, if these two groups do not talk to each other, the project is at risk of failure - and most project managers seem to be at a loss how to deal with this problem. Best practices designed to manage the above issue along with other related problems along the whole application development lifecycle are provided throughout this Report. Lack of good practice within IT Unlike COTS products, enterprise applications never finish. A successful application will lead to enhancement requests and on-going maintenance. These post-deployment costs, including support, represent as much as 80% of overall lifecycle costs, but developers rarely take enhancements and maintenance into account in their decision-making. Within IT, there is a lack of good practice, particularly with regard to using the right tools for the job. Senior corporate management skimp on tool resources but spend huge amounts on manpower, particularly contract and outsourced work. The opportunity to exploit automation and reduce the need for labour intensive work is not realized. Management also has difficulty in making the right choices on platform technologies, so that they best fit the business mission. All too often such decisions are left to low-level decision making, such as at the developer level, which can run counter to the long-term viability of the application. Key Findings -- The low success rate of medium to large software development projects highlights the need for business to adopt an Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) approach to help control projects and ensure business needs are met. -- The scope of ALM embraces all types of applications in the organization: custom, Commercial Off The Shelf (COTS), integration, outsourced, subscription, legacy, and enhancements. -- Management functionality in ALM aligns with quality processes and thereby helps achieve greater project success rates. -- Functionality in ALM improves team productivity, ability to deliver applications rapidly, improve quality, reduce risk, and align IT with business needs. -- ALM has evolved towards higher business level abstractions, making IT visible as a business unit to corporate management, and helping to bridge the cultural gap between business and IT. -- ALM tools can be misused if implemented as a defence mechanism against the difficult issues in software development. Lack of adoption results in wasted investment and worse productivity than before its introduction. -- ALM tools need to be combined with appropriate project management and development methodologies. -- Industry polarization around key development platforms, Eclipse and Microsoft Visual Studio.NET, benefits the development community by lowering costs and providing tool interoperability that gives ALM tool investment increased longevity . -- ALM tools are an important software investment and IT asset in their own right. Vendor Profiles Include: -0- *T Agitar Software Artemis ASG Software Solutions Avanade BEA Systems BMC Software CAST Software Embarcadero Technologies Empirix HAL Knowledge Systems HyPerformix Interactive Objects McCabe & Associates Oracle Parasoft Primavera Systems Quest Software Segue Sun Microsystems Unanet Technologies *T For more information visit http://www.researchandmarkets.com/reports/c26111 |
