Five Key Practices to Agile ALM

In this paper ThoughtWorks Studios' Ethan Teng, Cyndi Mitchell and Chad Wathington outline the five key organizational practices of Agile Application Lifecycle Management (ALM):

• Evolve process definition
• Embrace heterogeneity
• Build the right thing
• Practice Continuous Delivery
• Orchestrate, don't manage

They describe how companies that keep these practices in the forefront of all their software delivery activities will reap the benefits in increased agility. In addition, they explain why it's important for companies to provide the right tools to support these practices, and how the wrong tools can get in the way.

According to the white paper, the best tools for Agile ALM must support the five key organizational practices. They must:

• Enable teams to discover and evolve their process ‘on-the-fly’
• Support the unique needs of every project, as well as the organizational needs for
• consistency
• Facilitate constant collaboration among practitioners and stakeholders at all levels
• Automate testing and deployment to enable Continuous Delivery
• Provide complete transparency and visibility for leaders, without creating work for project teams