Understanding where your organization’s strengths and weaknesses are has always been critical for success. Nowhere is that more important than in the your organization’s application development team. Understanding where your team is today and taking steps to improve can save real dollars and real time.
A mature Application Lifecycle Management approach is key to IT being a strategic asset to the business. A common definition of ALM maturity levels is shown below.
| Maturity Level | Characteristics |
| Basic | Home grown software development processes in use, potentially due to technology / tool limitations. |
| Standard | Software development best practices performed more uniformly
Tools not fully integrated into the development environment |
| Advanced | Best practices adopted, documented, and maintained
Tools are fully integrated into the development environment |
| Dynamic | Development practices are highly innovative and demonstrate industry leadership |
Visual Studio and Team Foundation Server can provide the tools necessary for your organization to achieve a higher maturity level.
Every development organization should do a quick test to determine what their maturity level is and consider some steps to achieving a higher level.
1. Do you have an inventory of all the applications that are in use in your organization and have a record of all the tools, languages, databases, platforms, etc. that were used to develop or deploy the applications?
2. Is all your organization’s custom development code in a source control system and is it regularly backed up?
3. Do you have a documented set of standards for custom development?
4. Do you have a process for tracking new requirements, issues, and application exceptions?
5. Do you track the time required to implement application requirements?
These are just a few key indicators that an organization is at the Advanced or Dynamic level. If you found yourself answering no to any of the questions give us a call and ask how we can assist your organization.