One month to go for the SoftALM launch!

Here at JamBuster, we are very exhilarated as we are speeding towards the commercial release! It has been a month since we launched the Beta version of SoftALM.

By 2011, we had commercialized our in-house project portfolio management tool GDE. By 2013, we were looking for an affordable tool to integrated management of requirements, test cases and defects. When we could not, we saw it as an opportunity to build on our in-house tool these ALM capabilities. Our outsourcing development experience, research on available tools and customer feedbacks on GDE tool, helped us get clarity on what features an ALM tool should essentially have. We named our ALM tool – ‘SoftALM’ for software application lifecycle management.

The Agile methodology, over this time, became a ‘go-to’ strategy for majority of project teams around the globe. For our team. journey of transforming to be truly Agile began 8 months ago. Our team was quick to jump the “Agile” train, as the Agile methodology coincided with our set of principles and practices. Agile practice brought a sense of ownership and empowerment to each team member through interactions to get things ‘Done’! As believers in early involvement of customer, we started talking to them early and got their feedback through alpha and beta candidates. So now we appreciate why Agile philosophy recommends short release cycles. Of course, with our team becoming Agile, SoftALM which started as an ALM tool, quickly turned into an agile ALM tool.

Thus, adopting agile principles was not the most difficult task. Whereas, developing an ALM tool with Agile principles incorporated in it, required some serious analysis, constant conversations with customers and of course, hard-work! Our team and SoftALM have evolved over four internal iterations of software over the past 8 months. After incorporating beta feedback, we are a month away from commercial release slated in early January!

This experience has helped us develop a keen understanding of how to transform to agile especially when years are spent following Waterfall practices. We incorporated all the learnings in SoftALM! Thus SoftALM accommodates both methodologies and takes you through the Agile transformation in a painless way. We endeavor to stand by you through this transformation and make SoftALM your tool to win over agile!

Trying a Free Demo of this software would be a great way to see it yourself: Check it out!

Why & what should Executives know about ALM?

Software product and services companies executives are involved in envisioning, developing, marketing and selling software or services around it. Here is why ALM needs their executive championship!

ALM provides a framework for managing application lifecycle as namesake.  It essentially begins with customer feedback or requests on some capabilities or techno or marketing realizing an opportunity to automate some processes or improving current capabilities, essentially to develop a new software application.  The Marketing team or like then conceptualizes the product as features and requirements, most times working externally with customers, internally with technology and customer support to define value proposition or differentiation.  Design and development iterations follow. Verification team then traces behavior of the software against requirements laid out.  The defects, improvements are done and software is released to customers. Customers use it, report functional defects and usability challenges. These gets fixed and released, with newer features in next iteration of the cycle.

This application lifecycle thus requires many shake hands across multi-functional team, involves numerous qualitative situations with go / no-go decisions, and even when some data is available it makes sources of challenges. This if not managed well, can act as serious stress causing agents for your team and at worst result into a fractured team that can go pear-shaped at delivering a quality software on time and under budget. 

A well-defined ALM can provide framework for managing application lifecycle as namesake while facilitating the use of software tool for visibility and transparency, application of standards for each phase of lifecycle and result into efficient quality development. 

Executives are best suited to champion the need for developing, implementing and continuous improvement of an ALM framework that defines roles and responsibilities, empowers the team and brings focus on quality delivery, on time and under budget.

Current SoftALM combines JamBuster's experience of starting from waterfall software development lifecycle model, trying to use it with teams on multiple continents, and then moving to agile philosophy.  We then tried using tapestry of commercial applications to find out, they only partially covered ALM needs. Hence we began developing a flavor of application lifecycle management model, best practices and software tools that leverage agile for software enterprises.

SoftALM from JamBuster provides a process framework, best practices and the single tool for end-to-end management of the process with complete visibility.  The SoftALM process model focuses on creating a dream team that has ownership, deep knowledge of their products and pride in their expertise and work.  The processes, best practices and software tool are optimized to facilitate a predictive, high quality software delivery with in budget and on time! What more can we ask for in an ALM software?