Pro Visual Studio Team System Application Lifecycle Management (Expert's Voice in Visual Studio Team System)

You can have the best coders in the world working in your teams, but if your project management isn't up to scratch, your project is almost certain to be delayed, to come in over budget, and in some cases to fail entirely. By taking precise control of your application development process, you can make changes, both large and small, throughout your project's life cycle that will lead to better–quality finished products that are consistently delivered on time and within budget. Application lifecycle management (ALM) is an area of rapidly growing interest within the development community. Because its techniques allow you to deal with the process of developing applications across many areas of responsibility and across many different disciplines, its effects on your project can be wide ranging and pronounced. It is a project management tool that has practical implications for the whole team—from architects to designers, from developers to testers. This book focuses on the most powerful ALM tool available for the Microsoft .NET Framework: Visual Studio Team System (VSTS). It demonstrates the key concepts and techniques of ALM and illustrates how they can be achieved using the tools VSTS provides in a clear succinct style. After reading the book, you will understand how VSTS can be used to generate continuous meaningful reporting on your project's health for the decision makers on your team as well as for your project's sponsors. Developing software is hard--really hard. Even more so when you think about the fact that as an industry we do not typically examine software development in a holistic approach. That is, we don't ask ourselves questions such as "What are the business drivers for this project?" "What benefits will this project provide us?" and "How do we determine if the project is s- cessful?" In many cases, the software development industry is concerned with simply developing the software. Software failures cost companies billions (yes, that's not a typo--billions with a b) of dollars every year. Organizations can no longer afford to ignore these failures. They have to understand how software helps them reach their goals and how to prioritize investments in software. Organizations must also understand the difference between software that provides value and successful software projects (which may not be the same thing). Unfortunately, this has been a difficult transition. I have worked with numerous customers who do not know the benefit of building a particular piece of software. Likewise, I have worked with numerous developers who did not understand the importance of the software they were building. Situations like these are unacceptable in the current marketplace. Everyone must understand the context in which applications are being built and the fact that the context can change during the development process. Companies that cannot respond to change effectively are no longer in business "ALM is an entire approach, or perhaps mindset, covering all stages of the development lifecycle, from the requirements phase to the retirement of an application. ALM can, when well defined and automated, vastly improve business value in terms of delivering IT systems that will support the business processes for an organization. Done right, the ALM concept can help an organization's IT system to better adjust to changes in the business processes, giving the organization a competitive edge on the market. This book will show you how VSTS can implement an ALM process in your organization and help you achieve better business value at the same time."--BOOK JACKET Front Matter....Pages i-xxiii Why Do We Develop Business Software and Systems?....Pages 1-21 Application Lifecycle Management....Pages 23-41 Development Processes and Frameworks....Pages 43-85 The Agile Enterprise—Or How We Could Bridge the Gap....Pages 87-126 ALM Assessments....Pages 127-156 Application Lifecycle Management Using Visual Studio Team System....Pages 157-201 Working with VSTS Customization to Further Enhance the ALM Process....Pages 203-278 Real-Life Example....Pages 279-301 Back Matter....Pages 303-319