Architecture in the Business Context

Business needs and technical resources determine what ALM and IT Process technology and functionality your organization should deploy. To establish the best ALM and IT Process implementation, you not only need to consider all the components that comprise the ALM and IT Process solution and how they interact with the other elements of your IT infrastructure, but you also need to examine the level of business and technical capability that your organization can support. The Platform Vision model represents the components of ALM and IT Process implementation as a solution pattern. The ALM and IT Process solution pattern comprises three stages of evolution that correspond to business needs in order of maturity. The solution patterns three stages are: Define, Report, and Correlate. Each stage builds on the previous stage in terms of business requirements and technical complexity. The model progresses from defining the process, to addressing audit reports with compliance, to correlating audits across the entire value chainadding business value along the way.

ALM and IT Process

The Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) and IT Process solution pattern defines the policies and processes for managing IT infrastructure and operations, taking into account IT Governance and ALM. It focuses on aligning IT processes to support business functions and the organizations goals. It supports the definition, measurement, and correlation of IT processes. It also ensures a full audit trail with targeted reporting for transparency across all processes and compliance requirements. The ALM and IT Process solution pattern is a critical piece of the Platform Vision model, as it is the intersection of IT and business. It defines processes associated with key performance indicators (KPIs) to enable improvements based on measuring process effectiveness across the organization. Good IT processes can move IT from being merely tactical to having strategic business impact across the platform. ALM components in the ALM and IT Process solution pattern can help IT to rapidly build and adapt applications to support dynamically changing business requirements. Architectural prerequisites: Security and Management, Infrastructure and Management. Architectural recommendations: Data and Management, User Experience. Solution patterns it enables: User Experience, Integrated Communications, ECM and Collaboration, Business Intelligence, Web and Social Computing, SOA and BPM, Data and Management, Security and Management, Infrastructure and Management, Cloud.

The diagrams on this poster illustrate how the ALM and IT Process solution pattern integrates with other solution patterns throughout three stages. These views show architectural prerequisites for ALM and IT Process at each stage. In addition, you can see architectural recommendations for a mature ALM and IT Process implementation.

Users

STAGE 1 STAGE 2 STAGE 3

To build applications that are easy to

understand and operate.

To build applications with a user-centric

approach and interactive interface.

To deliver an integrated user experience in

enterprise-wide applications and to implement personalization and localization features.

User Experience Stage 1:

Personal

User Experience Stage 2:

Comprehensive

User Experience Stage 3:

Contextual

User Experience

Familiar and Intuitive

Unified Communications

SOA & BPM

Web and Social Computing

ECM and Collaboration

Business Intelligence

LOB Systems
To standardize data management

LOB Systems
administration processes, such as scheduling timely backups and building data taxonomy.

To enable regular assessment of

risks associated with existing data infrastructure and to take proactive measures for managing and monitoring data servers. To plan database capacity to handle spikes in data transaction rates. To establish policies and responsibilities for streamlining the planning, deployment, and management of the data platform and to reduce required resources and duration of effort.

LOB Systems
To establish formal processes for

LOB Systems
service-level management across all data management services and to proactively manage capacity, availability, and service continuity. To establish and execute routines to audit and report data quality issues.

To conduct periodic evaluation of the effectiveness of information security policies and procedures. To secure access to the code, application, and other IP. To track changes and manage versions.

Data and Management Stage 1:

Optimize

To establish a security management framework and policies that assign explicit roles, responsibilities, and authority to improve accountability. To establish certificate policies or practice statements for public key infrastructure.

Data and Management Stage 2:

Consolidate

To create and implement effective policies that match security requirements for encrypting sensitive information. To use Security Development Lifecycle to ensure that applications are secure from the ground up.

Data and Management Stage 3:

Consolidate

Data and Management

Security and Management Stage 1:

Identify

To facilitate effective incident management and change management through an established, formalized process that IT Support Services can use to resolve problems and improve existing services. To provide an efficient and improved environment for development and testing.

To provide an environment for role-based testing of an application.

Security and Management Stage 2:

Protect

To define and establish capacity management and backup plans for improved availability scenarios. To establish policies and responsibilities for streamlining the planning, deployment, and management of IT infrastructure and to reduce required resources and duration of effort. To provide a centralized deployment environment for applications and patches.

Security and Management Stage 3:

Predict

To establish policies for provisioning and transferring workloads across virtualized server farms and to enable granular control over backup and recovery of virtual machines. To standardize the process for system administration, service monitoring, and network administration and to ensure business continuity by maintaining Service Level Agreements. To audit IT systems for performance and availability.

Security and Management

Infrastructure and Management Stage 1:

Efficient Infrastructure

Infrastructure and Management Stage 2:

Intelligent Infrastructure

Infrastructure and Management Stage 3:

Automated Infrastructure

Infrastructure and Management

IT Process Stage 1:

Define

IT Process Stage 2:

Report

IT Process Stage 3:

Correlate

IT Process Cloud

Stage 1: Define
At the Define stage, organizations can gain the benefits of ALM and IT processes as informal policies and documentation are refined to help solve problems. Project managers use project management tools to gain some visibility into project status. These tools track data for an individual project. Some teams use requirements management and modeling tools to determine and track requirements. Different teams use different lifecycle systems. Some teams employ functional and security testing. Developers receive training from more experienced developers. Workflows and processes are developed for ideal scenarios. As such, no defined problem resolution process exists. IT processes are optimized based on the experience of the group implementing the process. Deployment occurs after main-line test cases pass, but comprehensive integration and regression testing is sometimes ignored. Each team sets its own quality standard for deployments. Versioning systems allow teams to work on multiple versions of an application simultaneously and port changes between releases. Teams deploy software during frequent maintenance windows. Project changes are coordinated to minimize user disruption.

Stage 2: Report
At the Report stage, organizations have a formalized process for system administration, service monitoring, and network administration. Operations management reviews are conducted across all phases of the IT service lifecycle. A defense-in-depth policy exists for security. The assessment process for risk communication to business owners is consistent. Project management and development tools are integrated to surface contextual information about the software development process. Tools facilitate capturing and evolving requirements to ensure that they stay current. Scenarios and personas are used when developing requirements. A development approach (such as Agile and Scrum) promotes evolutionary change throughout the project lifecycle and is used for enterprise-wide collaboration. Development teams use centralized source control, work-item tracking, documents, reporting, and auditing features. Roles are well defined. Test case management and Web testing with advanced load testing enable teams to verify application performance before deployment. Integrated testing exists and is a key part of development. Integrated configuration management performs essential defect tracking and vital change management tasks inside a tool. Centralized deployment and installation occur from one location. Integrated tools allow tracking and testing at various stages of development. Defect tracking occurs throughout development. Applications are easy to deploy.

Stage 3: Correlate
At the Correlate stage, formalized processes exist for service-level management across all services, including proactive management of capacity, availability, service continuity, workforce, security, and infrastructure engineering. Service delivery is regularly assessed, and improvement programs are initiated when needed. IT staff members are trained for their roles. Reports and cost/benefit analyses are sent to business owners. Comprehensive project lifecycle management addresses the needs of all people involved with the project. The progress and health of multiple projects are tracked and managed. Resources are proactively reallocated according to business priorities. Quality of service requirements are formally identified and managed. A formalized development approach uses fully integrated lifecycle tools. A common set of tools exists for architects, developers, testers, and database professionals. The development lifecycle is secure. Roles are specialized. Automated unit, functional, regression, distributed, and performance testing are conducted at project level. Developers adopt testing methodologies, enabling collaboration with the quality assurance team. Quality assurance methodologies are used. A comprehensive approach imposes the SCM discipline on all aspects of ALM. Deployment occurs through proxy servers; the quality assurance group distributes applications from a central location. Integrated testing tools are used, enabling seamless collaboration. Deployment tools are specialized.

The business value of any technology implementation surfaces when you consider the expense and effort of integrating that technology with your entire platform. The Advaiya Platform Vision model represents IT infrastructure as interconnected components, or solution patterns, that correspond to traditional IT service offerings. In addition to describing the requirements within each solution pattern, the Platform Vision model illustrates relationships and dependencies among the solution patterns. By examining how each element of your IT platform affects the other elements, you can determine the cost effectiveness and business value of any technology decision. Your IT infrastructures technical complexity and your organizations evolutionary stage shape how you approach a technology implementation. For each solution pattern, the Platform Vision model explains how that pattern is manifested in each of three stages of maturity within both the organization and technology. By using the Platform Vision model to assess your platform and your current capabilities, you can make informed business decisions that add long-term and short-term value.

Platform Vision is presented by Advaiya, Inc. www.advaiya.com | www.platformvision.com

2009 ADVAIYA, INC. REPRODUCTION IN WHOLE OR IN PART IS PROHIBITED. ALM 1.1.0.A