Comments on The Digité Fountainhead: When is a project too small or too short for ALM?

To the extent that one is looking at purely a tool...

2011-01-23T09:18:57.941-08:00

To the extent that one is looking at purely a tool usage perspective, the use of ANY tool may be considered essential vs. an overhead depending on a number of factors - culture, size of project, grographical spread of the team, etc. If you consider the current situation of many collocated teams doing Scrum or Kanban projects, they are very happy with simply the physical Story/ Kanban board and have zero interest in any electronic tool. However, from the "application's" perspective, whatever work they do would still be a part of that application's lifecycle management. The point I was making is that an "ALM" discussion is not and should not just be an "ALM tool" discussion.

Sudi, yes. You are correct. I would even state i...

2011-01-23T07:05:31.613-08:00

Sudi, yes. You are correct. I would even state it more bluntly and expand it a bit. An ALM solution that is put in place for all to use will make everyone better by consolidation of knowledge and efforts. Thus, avoiding gaps and overlaps. Whether they are good, or not so good, they will be better as a team by adherance to the process. Even a poorly thought out process that is followed is better than a good process that is not followed. The organizations who are individual centric do not get the most out of their teams if that means a concession to the ALM process. Look at the Yankees... Great individual contributors, but they do not play well as a team and therefore fall short of their goals. You can have great talent, but if they do not work as a shared knowledge unit - following an ALM process, they will not reach their ultimate team potential.

I think there is another aspect of organization cu...

2011-01-22T20:32:31.168-08:00

I think there is another aspect of organization culture. Some organizations are inherently process centric, metric centric (not just for the show of it). Some organizations tend to be individual centric where they depend on maverick leaders, individual heroism. ALM tools will add immense value to former category of organizations. To the other group, it will keep questioning the value of such a tool but still do continue to use it. They find it politically incorrect to say that they are not process and data centric.

I might add that the exception swallows the rule. ...

2011-01-21T19:31:32.895-08:00

I might add that the exception swallows the rule. If you make exceptions to the ALM process management by exclusion, then you do not follow an ALM process. Every change, small or large, can have extreme consequences if not documented properly for later consideration.

Well done on the three points!