Application Lifecycle Management (ALM)

Techopedia explains Application Lifecycle Management (ALM)

The ALM process involves managing the application lifecycle through governance, development and operations. Considered the cohesive bond of the development life cycle, ALM always begins with an idea, which leads to the development of the application. After the application is created, the next step is deployment in a live environment. Once the application loses its business value, it reaches the end of life, where it is no longer used.

Although ALM does not support particular life cycle management process activities, it keeps all the activities in sync. ALM advantages are as follows:

• Sharing best practices helps increase developer productivity.
• Smooth information flow and collaborative work help break boundaries.
• ALM reduces time to develop and adapt applications.
• Simplified integration accelerates the development process.

ALM disadvantages are as follows:

• Increases the overall application cost.
• Directly responsible for vendor lock-in.