Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) is a continuous process of managing the life of an application through governance, development and maintenance. ALM is the marriage of business management to software engineering

Software engineering

Software Engineering is the application of a systematic, disciplined, quantifiable approach to the development, operation, and maintenance of software, and the study of these approaches; that is, the application of engineering to software...

 made possible by tools that facilitate and integrate requirements management

Requirements management

Requirements management is the process of documenting, analyzing, tracing, prioritizing and agreeing on requirements and then controlling change and communicating to relevant stakeholders. It is a continuous process throughout a project...

, architecture

Software architecture

The software architecture of a system is the set of structures needed to reason about the system, which comprise software elements, relations among them, and properties of both...

, coding

Computer programming

Computer programming is the process of designing, writing, testing, debugging, and maintaining the source code of computer programs. This source code is written in one or more programming languages. The purpose of programming is to create a program that performs specific operations or exhibits a...

, testing

Software testing

Software testing is an investigation conducted to provide stakeholders with information about the quality of the product or service under test. Software testing can also provide an objective, independent view of the software to allow the business to appreciate and understand the risks of software...

, tracking

Issue tracking system

An issue tracking system is a computer software package that manages and maintains lists of issues, as needed by an organization...

, and release management

Release management

The release management process is a relatively new but rapidly growing discipline within software engineering of managing software releases....

.
Proponents of application lifecycle management claim that it

• Increases productivity
  Productivity
  Productivity is a measure of the efficiency of production. Productivity is a ratio of what is produced to what is required to produce it. Usually this ratio is in the form of an average, expressing the total output divided by the total input...
  
  , as the team shares best practices for development and deployment, and developers need focus only on current business requirements
• Improves quality, so the final application meets the needs and expectations of users
• Breaks boundaries through collaboration
  Collaboration
  Collaboration is working together to achieve a goal. It is a recursive process where two or more people or organizations work together to realize shared goals, — for example, an intriguing endeavor that is creative in nature—by sharing...
  
   and smooth information flow
• Accelerates development through simplified integration
• Cuts maintenance time by synchronizing application and design
• Maximizes investments in skills, processes, and technologies
• Increases flexibility by reducing the time it takes to build and adapt applications that support new business initiatives

Opponents of application lifecycle management claim that it

• Increases an application's whole-life cost
  Whole-life cost
  Whole-life cost, or Life-cycle cost , refers to the total cost of ownership over the life of an asset . Also commonly referred to as "cradle to grave" or "womb to tomb" costs. Costs considered include the financial cost which is relatively simple to calculate and also the environmental and...
  
  
• Increases vendor lock-in
  Vendor lock-in
  In economics, vendor lock-in, also known as proprietary lock-in or customer lock-in, makes a customer dependent on a vendor for products and services, unable to use another vendor without substantial switching costs...
  
  
• Single point of failure

• Requirements Analysis
  Requirements analysis
  Requirements analysis in systems engineering and software engineering, encompasses those tasks that go into determining the needs or conditions to meet for a new or altered product, taking account of the possibly conflicting requirements of the various stakeholders, such as beneficiaries or users...
  
  
• Requirements Management
  Requirements management
  Requirements management is the process of documenting, analyzing, tracing, prioritizing and agreeing on requirements and then controlling change and communicating to relevant stakeholders. It is a continuous process throughout a project...
  
  
• Feature management
  Feature (software design)
  The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers defines the term feature in IEEE 829 as "A distinguishing characteristic of a software item ." - Feature-rich :...
  
  
• Modeling
  Model-driven engineering
  Model-driven engineering is a software development methodology which focuses on creating and exploiting domain models , rather than on the computing concepts...
  
  
• Design
  Software design
  Software design is a process of problem solving and planning for a software solution. After the purpose and specifications of software are determined, software developers will design or employ designers to develop a plan for a solution...
  
  
• Project Management
  Project management
  Project management is the discipline of planning, organizing, securing, and managing resources to achieve specific goals. A project is a temporary endeavor with a defined beginning and end , undertaken to meet unique goals and objectives, typically to bring about beneficial change or added value...
  
  
• Change management
• Configuration Management
  Configuration management
  Configuration management is a field of management that focuses on establishing and maintaining consistency of a system or product's performance and its functional and physical attributes with its requirements, design, and operational information throughout its life.For information assurance, CM...
  
  
• Software Information Management (for ALM Tool Integration)
• Build management
  Software build
  In the field of computer software, the term software build refers either to the process of converting source code files into standalone software artifact that can be run on a computer, or the result of doing so...
  
  
• Software Testing
  Software testing
  Software testing is an investigation conducted to provide stakeholders with information about the quality of the product or service under test. Software testing can also provide an objective, independent view of the software to allow the business to appreciate and understand the risks of software...
  
  
• Release Management
  Release management
  The release management process is a relatively new but rapidly growing discipline within software engineering of managing software releases....
  
  
• Software Deployment
  Software deployment
  Software deployment is all of the activities that make a software system available for use.The general deployment process consists of several interrelated activities with possible transitions between them. These activities can occur at the producer site or at the consumer site or both...
  
  
• Issue management
• Monitoring and reporting
• Workflow
  Workflow
  A workflow consists of a sequence of connected steps. It is a depiction of a sequence of operations, declared as work of a person, a group of persons, an organization of staff, or one or more simple or complex mechanisms. Workflow may be seen as any abstraction of real work...
  
  
• Open Source License Management

As the Integrated Development Environment

Integrated development environment

An integrated development environment is a software application that provides comprehensive facilities to computer programmers for software development...

 (IDE) continues to evolve, tool vendors are increasingly integrating their products to deliver suites.