Title of the presentation: From Subversion to ALM – Bringing the Process to the Desktop

Category: Technical presentation

Level: Advanced

Date and Time: Wednesday, 15th October 2008, 11:15 a.m. - 12:00 p.m.

Abstract: As the complexity and sophistication of the software development task has grown, the number of tools involved has grown with it. It started with version control tools at the heart of an application's life cycle and it expanded from there, initially by adding individual point tools and then simple suites of tools emerged that provided loose integrations. We now see the arrival of more comprehensive lifecycle tool suites that provide more and tighter integrations to enable so-called 'Application Lifecycle Management' (ALM).

Though there is no commonly agreed upon industry definition of what constitutes and what does not constitute ALM, definitions typically include that it covers assets throughout various aspects and phases of software development - such as project management, project tracking, requirements, development, quality assurance, and release management - and provides traceability across all of those assets. In addition, users increasingly expect this information to be presented and useable in their development environments.

In this presentation, we will take a look at ALM on a Subversion based solution. We will show how a process can be supported, presented and used in your desktop, both Microsoft Visual Studio and Eclipse, and discuss the value this brings to your organisation.

At Philips, Auke Jilderda devised an approach for software development teams to collaborate between multiple organisations and locations in an efficient, controlled way.  The approach deploys key aspects of open source software engineering inside an enterprise (without disrupting existing mechanisms, such as for escalation and conflict resolution, road mapping, and requirements management) to foster scalable communities in which teams can develop and maintain the diversities on others' software in an efficient and controlled fashion.  He deployed the approach at a large product family program in the Philips Medical Systems division.