ALM Tools Speed, Refine App Development

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1 Today s software developers need to create and test applications faster than ever, and they need to do so without introducing mistakes and releasing apps with bugs. Don t panic. Application lifecycle management tools can help. Editor s note The Right ALM Software for Your Organization

2 editor s note Variety Hour With ALM Tools In today s fast-paced world, there s less time to develop a mobile application, let alone test it or keep track of all the iterations. Enter the wonderful world of application lifecycle management (ALM) software, which can help companies stay on top of the insanity, particularly when it comes to mobile-application development. These aren t your mother s ALM products today s options come in a wide variety of flavors so that any business size, development style and environment can take advantage of the functionality that ALM tools offer. In the first article in this handbook, consultant Matt Heusser walks you through the little-known and even less-understood world of service virtualization, in which developers use a set of tools to make designing and testing mobile applications faster and easier. By improving development speed and communication among teams, service virtualization can extend the scope and effectiveness of an ALM strategy. Next, software tester Gerie Owen matches ALM suites to company size and style. The key to avoiding the dreaded shelfware when companies buy products but don t put them to use is building a use case that accurately reflects a company s strategy, priorities and problem areas. Finally, find out why ALM tools are built the way they are. Heusser returns to explain Webbased card walls and provide several practical tips on getting the most out of Web-based ALM software. n Valerie Silverthorne Site Editor, SearchSoftwareQuality 2

3 management Service virtualization is a fancy buzzword that represents a whole new category of software tools. Websites such as Gmail and Amazon function very differently than their 20th century grandparents. Today s websites are likely to have front-end technology and back-end services. Front-end technologies display content while back-end services provide content. Modern Web services are the backend you never see. If you d like to see a Web service in action, go to a webpage like Gmail.com, which can display information dynamically. Log in, select view developer tools in your Web browser, and click on the network tab. Then mouse over a user or click on something that doesn t go to a new webpage but requests new information you ll see a new Web request. That s a service call. Virtualization creates something that acts like a Web service but is easier to use and requires very little memory. For example, a virtualized service might return pictures, but it s always the same picture. Think of it as a mock object for an API. So how does that virtualization help testers? Service Virtualization in Action Entire organizations are powered by services. Service-oriented architecture, Web services, microservices architecture, RESTful APIs and message queues, even database and print servers run over Internet ports. The idea behind these services is to make a business functionality such as login, search, display a product, lookup coverage data, process a claim or sell a ticket a service, then compose applications out of a collection of services. So instead of making a mobile application, a front-end technology is created and integrated with back-end services. Creating a public API means adding security, 3

4 management then exposing the existing feature to the world. Teams within an organization can work on their various components in parallel yet still integrate their tasks. But services also bring a new set of challenges. Development teams can create a virtual service in a few hours and use it to test their website and identify problems early. Imagine you work for an automotive supplier and intend to wrap the new order code in a Web API. The API allows customers to order from the Web, through an electronic data interchange, on their phones or in-store and still receive the same service. Your Web team s work will probably greatly exceed that of the team wrapping existing order-entry code with Web services because all that team has to do is write a wrapper. But, right now, the wrapper does not exist. So how do you get started? How do you test? You could learn Linux and set up a stubbed server. Or you could take the service definition and use tools to set up a virtual service. The virtualization tools are an example of how the service will work: If given a part that doesn t exist, the service will return a specific error. If given a part that s out of stock, it will indicate that and request a valid order. Once you ve created the virtual service, which, mind you, takes just hours, not days, use that service to test the website or turn it over to the other team as an example of how you expect their service to operate. That can help eliminate problems early in the cycle and even prevent miscommunication. Testing Logjam Amazon s early move to Web services is welldocumented. What isn t mentioned very often is its impact on testing. One Amazon engineer, who left there in 2012, told me that the company s system integration test environment was constantly down. That makes sense. While the engineer s team was trying to test in that environment, so was everyone else. That meant reboots, outages, changing service definitions and new builds with bugs. 4

5 management This situation can be especially hard on continuous integration (CI), which can slow down and report false failures when the systems that your software calls are down or return errors. CI can call a virtualized service that responds with known answers to known queries. To get realistic results, many service virtualization tools allow record and playback, which actually records live transactions, stores the results and plays them back during testing. This feature doesn t prevent the need for end-to-end testing, but CI is not expected to do that. Service virtualization provides a cheap form of testing that responds in predictable ways, thus eliminating dependence on services that might be slow, changing, unpredictable or nonexistent. When testing client applications that call or rely on Web services or databases, virtualization helps isolate problems, tracks down bugs and even resolves conflicts between an organization s development teams. Matt Heusser 5

6 tools Purchasing application lifecycle management software can take a lot of time and cause a lot of anxiety. If you make the wrong decision, money is wasted on software you never end up using, also known as shelfware. If you make the right decision, your organization can save time and money and keep that software off the shelf. One of the best ways for an organization to determine which application lifecycle management (ALM) product best suits the company s needs is to evaluate its circumstances. The company must clearly define the issues causing the most serious bottlenecks in the current process. It also needs to understand its own demographics (size, history, financial position, employee experiences, etc.). Then it can rank an ALM tool s features by their importance. Here s a look at several company types and the ALM software that fits each scenario. Merged Companies Large businesses that form from one or more mergers may have several different and incompatible ways of approaching ALM. These organizations tend to operate individually as pre-merged entities. As a result, development and operations may be adhering to different processes. The DevOps teams may be located in different geographical areas, making collaboration among the teams even more complex. These enterprises should consider ALM products that offer strong traceability, visibility Companies looking for an ALM tool should first identify the issues causing the most serious bottlenecks in the development process. 6

7 tools and collaboration features. Integration capabilities are important because most large organizations already own and use tools for ALM components such as version control, workflow or configuration management. IBM, HP and Microsoft provide enterprise-proven ALM products that meet the primary needs of a large, merged organization. IBM Rational focuses on collaboration for organizations needing to integrate diverse processes. Many large organizations are already using products in the Rational suite, such as ClearCase for configuration management. IBM products support both Agile and Waterfall methodologies and integrate with IBM Tivoli to support continuous integration. The product is older with a lot of legacy support, but IBM has kept it up to date, aligning with emerging ALM trends. HP provides an ALM suite that is strong on traceability and visibility. HP s ALM software allows 360-degree links from requirements to defects, and its dashboard provides an easy way to produce effective metrics. HP also offers integration with most third-party tools, including IBM and Microsoft, and it has a software as a service (SaaS) option. Microsoft s ALM software is based on Visual Studio, a widely used integrated development environment. Therefore, it s likely that large, merged organizations will already be using some of these tools and services. Microsoft s Team Foundation Server (TFS) provides control and configuration features, and it can be integrated with HP s ALM software to take advantage of HP s requirements and testing functionalities. Microsoft s ALM software is a good choice for organizations that use a.net framework because.net developers use Visual Studio and often like to use TFS. Rapidly Growing Startups Another typical scenario for ALM is the fastgrowing startup, generally a small organization experiencing tremendous growth due to the popularity of its initial product. The core development team is usually expanding and may no longer be located in the same building or geographic region. In addition, there may be new stakeholders to whom the company is accountable. These stakeholders may include 7

8 tools new levels of management, venture capitalists, support staff and perhaps stockholders. These teams focus on speed to market, which might have been easier when there was no defined development process. The idea of implementing some kind of defined process may be viewed as a potential roadblock instead of an expediter in product development. These organizations most likely use Agile methodologies or continuous integration to avoid a formal and expensive development process. Since maintaining and improving speed to market continues to be the startup s focus, the development teams will need an ALM tool that provides traceability and visibility without creating too much overhead. Growing startups will also need a tool with collaboration features to improve communication among the dispersed teams. Support for Agile methodologies is an absolute must. The software must offer or at least integrate with tools that support version control and release management. It must be userfriendly and easy to install, and the vendor must provide support and training because these small startups usually don t have these services in-house. Vendors like Rally Software, VersionOne and Atlassian have product features that meet the major requirements of fastgrowing startups. Rally s software is considered a premier ALM product for Agile methodologies. Its project Speed to market is the startup s focus, so their development teams need an ALM tool that provides traceability and visibility without cre ating too much overhead. management features, including resource planning, user stories and testing modules, are geared toward Agile development. The product provides collaboration with Flowdock, which has chat and features. Rally provides training and certification for the Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) and is one of the few ALM tools to support it. Rally Insights Analytics offers Agile-specific metrics as well as metrics based on the Software Development Performance Index, along with on-premises and SaaS options. 8

9 tools Consider VersionOne if your startup s main goal is to establish a simple application lifecycle framework. It s geared toward Agile project and portfolio management, including release and sprint planning, product planning and reporting analytics. Along with support and training options, VersionOne s product offers more than 70 prebuilt integrations with other products, making it a complete ALM tool. Atlassian is a good choice for organizations doing continuous integration and DevOps. Atlassian s product supports Agile and Waterfall methodologies, and its processes are simple. Its defect-tracking feature, JIRA, is open source and provides collaboration for requirements of code and repository management. It also offers a group chat feature. Regulated Businesses Organizations that operate in a regulatory environment have specific needs for ALM. Unlike growing startups, these organizations are focused on process since their stakeholders include regulatory agencies. They must comply with the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, the DO-178B for software safety and other regulations. Often, these organizations are developing safety-critical or medical-related applications, making quality management paramount. They can t risk major accounting errors or product defects. Documentation throughout the lifecycle is required, and the selected ALM tool must facilitate and simplify that process. Visibility and the ability to report information quickly and easily are critical. Polarion ALM focuses on regulatory requirements and covers the entire product lifecycle. It provides traceability as well as audit trails within and among projects to demonstrate compliance with standards put in place by the International Organization for Standardization, the Federal Drug Administration and many other regulatory authorities in the United States and Europe. Polarion s software provides templates for Federal Emergency Management Agency risk assessments and an electronic signature functionality to ensure accountability. Automated event notifications, change 9

10 tools notification features and the dashboard give visibility to stakeholders and enhance collaboration among teams. Change Management Although not a particular category of company, most companies today have to respond to disruptive change. Organizations may be forced to develop a new product, offer an existing product on new technology like mobile devices or quickly increase the speed to market because of competition or customer expectations. As a result, an organization may need to implement an Agile methodology or continuous delivery. Often, these organizations have ALM processes and tools in place, but those tools may no longer address the new issues that have emerged in a changing environment. Companies should therefore add tools with integration capabilities and collaboration features. Because these organizations are focused on speed, the new tools must be easy to use and provide training and support. Jama Software offers requirements management and collaboration features in the Jama Review Center to hasten the product development process. In addition, the Jama Integration Hub provides pre-built integration with major ALM tools, including HP Quality Center, TFS, Rally and JIRA. Jama s Agile Workflow Design can help organizations attempting to scale Agile methodology. CollabNet s ALM tool supports a distributed version control system, which is helpful for large organizations. Although it s not a complete solution, CollabNet s product provides integration with many open source tools, including Git and Jenkins. It s also easy to use and provides training and support. Choosing an ALM solution doesn t have to be like a trip to the dentist. By understanding problem areas and requirements as well as stakeholder needs, organizations and their development teams can build on existing work styles without causing significant disruption. And that should be the goal of ALM. Gerie Owen 10

11 process The metaphors for software are often borrowed from the physical world. For example, the idea of a desktop with folders and files on the personal computer comes from the very real, hands-on desktop, folders and files. Similarly, the virtual card wall found in many application lifecycle management (ALM) tools comes from the physical card wall it replaced. Exploring where ALM tools came from and how they have evolved can help developers understand the direction the software may be heading. One popular project management system is David Allen s method and book Getting Things Done. The first step in this system is to take inventory of all ongoing work, visualize each task separately, put them all in a single box and prioritize them. That s exactly what software developer Ken Schwaber did with his team at Individual Inc. when he was developing the Scrum process in the early 1990s. Breaking down requirements and specifications into individual tasks makes them easier to understand and act on. In software development, tasks were then written on cards and placed on a wall. Whether referred to as stories, use cases or features, the cards were sorted as to do, doing and done to help management visualize and focus on the actual work in progress. Each development team could see if they were doing too many tasks at once and remove any impediments to finishing a particular task. The card wall was also intentionally limited in size. For a new task card to be placed on the wall, an existing card had to be removed to make room. From Physical Boards to the Web Early Web-based project management tools started with a specific goal. Back then, the development project was broken down into 11

12 process tasks, tickets or to-do elements. Each of these items could entertain a discussion. When the task was completed, it was crossed off. The next generation of project tools transferred the physical card wall to the desktop computer. Anyone could create an account and easily create a card, save it and move it. The best examples may be software makers LeanKit and Trello, whose initial products were essentially a card wall on your desktop. A recent demo of LeanKit s tool shows it s still living up to that idea. The power of these tools lies in their simplicity and flexibility: Each development team can have its own card wall, and a picture of the logged-in user appears with the story card. To add a column to the card wall, just right click. can say, If you put a card in the No. 1 slot, it ll typically take two weeks or less to finish. That sounds better than, We have 18 months of work requirements in our backlog. Cycletime metrics help the team prioritize tasks and identify bottlenecks. Needless to say, it s possible to calculate these metrics using a physical card wall, a spreadsheet and some tracking. But the new breed of ALM tools have made it a feature that can be implemented once and used by anyone. Here are some tips for using Web-based ALM tools effectively: Keep the virtual card wall small. If your virtual card wall is too complex to zoom out and see the work of the entire team, it s likely the team is too large or doing too much work. A Successful Web Wall What appears to the user to be a card wall is really a database with a Web front-end. That means the system knows everything about a card when it was created, acted on and completed. Average cycle time can be calculated during each step of the process. The team Limit work in progress. A card wall can suddenly become overwhelmed with work. That leads to multitasking, which slows delivery times. So limit the work in progress at every step. When a team member is stymied because the next step in the cycle has reached its limit, that member needs to shift his or her attention 12

13 process to relieving the bottleneck and improving the workflow. Trade the customer view for the work view. A virtual Scrum board, or Kanban board, shows what the team is working on at the moment. Still, it s important to remember the difference between a story card and a specification. Some teams may want a tool that can display what s being worked on as well as what product the customer expects to be delivered and when. Balance between a team and many teams. Most successes come when management has both a virtual card wall showing the individual tasks of each team and the capability of zooming out to view the entire project. Let the computer do the spreadsheet work. Look for an ALM tool that can track progress and make predictions. If you have multiple teams and can assign stories, see if you can zoom out to get a portfolio view and predict when each assignment will end and which teams will be available to start the next assignment. Avoid comparing teams by story count. Development teams working on different assignments will process work in different ways. Manage teams according to the measurable value they deliver, not by comparing the work of one team to another. If the value delivered by a team is low, consider finding more valuable assignments for that team. Putting the card wall on a computer can add many physical constraints, such as bottlenecks. The key is to minimize those constraints without creating new bugs in the process. Matt Heusser 13

14 about the authors Matt Heusser is a consultant at Excelon Development, where he recruits, trains and performs software testing and development. Read more about him on his blog, Creative Chaos, or follow him on Gerie Owen manages projects involving multiple applications and coordinates test teams across multiple time zones. She also is a Certified Scrum Master and has presented at conferences, including Better Software, Belgium Testing Days, CAST, TestKit and STPCon. Find her on LinkedIn. is a SearchSoftwareQuality.com e-publication. Ron Karjian Managing Editor Moriah Sargent Associate Managing Editor Valerie Silverthorne Site Editor Brein Matturro Site Managing Editor Linda Koury Director of Online Design Neva Maniscalco Graphic Designer Martha Moore Production Editor Doug Olender Publisher dolender@techtarget.com Annie Matthews Director of Sales amatthews@techtarget.com TechTarget 275 Grove Street, Newton, MA Stay Connected! today TechTarget Inc. No part of this publication may be transmitted or reproduced in any form or by any means without written permission from the publisher. TechTarget reprints are available through The YGS Group. About TechTarget: TechTarget publishes media for information technology professionals. More than 100 focused websites enable quick access to a deep store of news, advice and analysis about the technologies, products and processes crucial to your job. Our live and virtual events give you direct access to independent expert commentary and advice. At IT Knowledge Exchange, our social community, you can get advice and share solutions with peers and experts. cover art: istock 14