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, Technographics
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3.73
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4.10
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3.00
All scores are based on a scale of 0 (weak) to 5 (strong).
ALM Vendors Have Yet To Fully Address Many Common Challenges
While many aspects of the ALM tools market have improved substantially in the past two years
since the Agile development management Forrester Wave evaluation, other areas remain ripe for
innovation and improvement:
FOR APPLICATION DEVELOPMENT & DELIVERY PROFESSIONALS
The Forrester Wave: Application Life-Cycle Management, Q4 2012 14
2012, Forrester Research, Inc. Reproduction Prohibited October 23, 2012
Testing. With one or two notable exceptions, the vendors we included in this study did not excel
at any aspect of testing support. To some extent, the weakness of testing features is characteristic
of the ALM tools market, not just the vendors we assessed. However, its still worth noting that
some specialty vendors have done a better job of connecting testing to other ALM activity.
Some requirements tools vendors, for example, provide rapid test generation from requirements,
something that many purveyors of bigger ALM suites have yet to implement.
Collaboration. While we have seen some progress in this area, thats damning by faint praise
considering how ofen collaboration is at the core of an organizations ALM challenges. Take,
for example, the very common challenge of collaborating with an ofshore partner. While some
features, such as feeds or wikis, make it easier for onshore and ofshore teams to eavesdrop on
each others activities, these are not vehicles for communicating product vision, mentoring
people on the other team, or suggesting ideas for process improvement.
Mobile support. At the risk of stating the obvious, many aspects of mobile development user
experience, testing, deployment, etc. are signifcantly diferent from the elements involved
in building middleware. Yet the typical ALM vendor today has done very little to address these
needs, despite the continued expansion of the mobile market.
Integration. ALM vendors have acknowledged the inevitability of integration with other
commercial and open source tools. However, were a long way from arriving at a common
integration strategy that makes it easier for customers to select ALM tools based on their
individual merits outside of integration. Some vendors provide an application programming
interface (API) with few or no prebuilt connectors. Others provide plenty of connectors, with
perhaps a weaker API for custom-built integrations. Te fact that small companies, such as
Kovair and Tasktop, have established themselves as third-party providers of ALM connectors is
a testament to the weaknesses of the overall ALM markets integration eforts.
VENDOR PROFILES
Leaders
IBMs ofering is becoming more than the sum of its parts. IBMs position in this years
assessment of the ALM market is a testament to an important principle: Its not enough just
to have good products the products, in combination, must support common activities
in sofware development and delivery. In previous years, IBM has certainly provided strong
solutions, such as Rational RequisitePro, Rational Team Concert, and Rational DOORS in
specifc functional areas such as requirements, planning, and project management. However,
IBM provided multiple solutions in some of these areas, leading to confusion about what exactly
each of these tools was supporting and how they all worked together.
FOR APPLICATION DEVELOPMENT & DELIVERY PROFESSIONALS
The Forrester Wave: Application Life-Cycle Management, Q4 2012 15
2012, Forrester Research, Inc. Reproduction Prohibited October 23, 2012
Tat confusion has largely dissipated with IBMs current ALM ofering. Not only has IBM
continued development of its strong suite of products, but it has also stitched them together in
a more coherent way. Te company has also made clearer the use cases it supports with its tools,
such as Agile teams and embedded sofware development. Because of the companys strong
product and portfolio strategy, it is possible to write about IBMs ALM oferings taken as a
whole with far less irony.
Rally Sofware continues its leadership in Agile/Lean. Rally targets a very healthy and
growing opportunity: the expanding number of organizations that have adopted Agile and
Lean. Rallys tools are optimized for Agile planning, project management, status reporting, and
other actions that happen within and outside sprints. Te companys acquisition of AgileZen,
a Lean project management tool, was a natural ft for both Rally and its customers. So too was
the addition of Rally Portfolio Manager, a tool for planning, decision-making, and management
above the level of an individual project or product.
Rally also continues to provide thought leadership in the Agile and Lean community. However,
this focus on Agile has a downside: non-Agile teams will fnd Rallys products and services far
less attractive than other general-purpose ALM tools. Rallys leadership rests with its breadth and
depth of capabilities for Agile teams, combined with a strong and focused corporate strategy.
PTC continues its leadership addressing regulated and digital products needs. PTC
provides strength where product-based development and compliance intersect. No other
company, with the possible exception of IBM, has done as much to support teams of embedded
sofware developers and systems engineers. PTC helps frms address digital product
development needs for products such as appliances, vehicles, and medical devices that have
sofware components while still maintaining support for teams building and delivering
sofware-only products and projects.
PTCs strength rests on its long-standing support for addressing governance and compliance
challenges. Burrowing into this niche has its concomitant cost: a more complex product
that is harder to justify adopting for teams that dont have to satisfy the needs of auditors or
government regulators.
CollabNet provides a fexible ALM framework optimized for the cloud. As already noted,
one of the strengths of CollabNets ALM suite is the fexibility with which users can defne
ALM content. We also see this fexibility pay of when trying to efectively address the needs of
complex teams or complex projects, where there is less chance for a one-size-fts-all design.
CollabNet has also invested heavily in supporting cloud development and deployment. Not
only are CollabNets tools available in the cloud (CloudForge), but they also include features
optimized for developing, testing, and deploying cloud systems.
FOR APPLICATION DEVELOPMENT & DELIVERY PROFESSIONALS
The Forrester Wave: Application Life-Cycle Management, Q4 2012 16
2012, Forrester Research, Inc. Reproduction Prohibited October 23, 2012
Microsof shortens cycle times. Starting with Visual Studio at the front end and through to
Team Foundation Server (TFS) at the back end, Microsofs ALM portfolio provides broad
life-cycle support. Microsofs overarching goal is to shorten cycle times, which requires a
combination of individual measures (task management, test automation, etc.).
Microsof deserves recognition for understanding how central collaboration is to ALM. While
the M word, management, is part of the ALM acronym, ALM initiatives frequently fail because
they emphasize control over collaboration. Features such as visualization via PowerPoint and
translating recorded manual testing into automated tests emphasize collaboration in these
two examples, with business users.
Serena Sofware orchestrates IT projects from idea to deployment. Since retooling its ALM
strategy, Serena has made impressive advances at both the individual tool and the suite level.
Central to its product strategy is orchestration, a vision of ALM as an ongoing, rhythmic
activity. Not surprisingly, given this vision of a regular fow of activity (conceive, build, test,
deploy), Serena has one of the best workfow designers available. Serenas recent enhancements
to its ALM portfolio, such as the Serena Release Manager, provide more support in this end-to-
end orchestration model.
Strong Performers
For HP, quality is truly central, but other ALM capabilities are growing. HP Quality Center is
the fulcrum on which HPs ALM strategy rests. HP Quality Center is a ubiquitous part of many
organizations ALM infrastructure. Consequently, other ALM vendors integrate with HP Quality
Center as a matter of course, almost as a price of entry into any potential customers shortlist.
HP has improved upon and expanded its ALM capabilities beyond test management and test
automation in the two years since the previous Forrester Wave evaluation of this space. HP
now provides improved requirements management and traceability. Another example, HPs
Application Lifecycle Intelligence (ALI), ofers a broad set of ALM data aggregation and
analysis features, with strong reporting and dashboarding components. Given the importance
of this information for everything from team-level continuous improvement to executive-
level portfolio management, it represents one of many areas where HP has moved quickly to
distinguish itself as a serious ALM player.
Atlassian focuses on issue tracking and collaboration within teams. Atlassians JIRA, a widely
popular issue tracking tool, ofen serves double duty as a requirements management system.
Te companys Confuence Wiki is equally popular with development teams. Te two products,
in tandem, support the various kinds of day-to-day work done within sofware development
teams, which are always looking for ways to better collaborate (for example, through a wiki).
FOR APPLICATION DEVELOPMENT & DELIVERY PROFESSIONALS
The Forrester Wave: Application Life-Cycle Management, Q4 2012 17
2012, Forrester Research, Inc. Reproduction Prohibited October 23, 2012
While Atlassian has decided to provide a narrower set of ALM tools than other vendors, it
continues to hone the capabilities in the areas where the company believes it can excel, such as
providing a marketplace for its developer community to provide plug-ins. Te company has
made moves into more enterprise-level scenarios, with new capabilities such as Stash, a tool for
the management of Git repositories that enterprise customers demand. Atlassian has also made
enhancements to its support, sales force, and other aspects of its business needed to gain ground
in the enterprise market.
Contenders
Rocket Aldon provides strong operational support. Unlike other ALM vendors, Rocket
Aldons roots lie in sofware delivery, not sofware development. Rocket Aldon has focused from
the beginning on the operational side, including both automation and reporting. Unlike other
vendors, Rocket Aldon is expanding backward, not forward, in the sofware timeline, adding
support for more upstream ALM activities, such as demand management and requirements.
SUPPLEMENTAL MATERIAL
Online Resource
Te online version of Figure 3 is an Excel-based vendor comparison tool that provides detailed
product evaluations and customizable rankings.
Data Sources Used In This Forrester Wave
Forrester used a combination of three data sources to assess the strengths and weaknesses of each
solution:
Hands-on lab evaluations. Vendors spent one day with a team of analysts who performed a
hands-on evaluation of the product using a scenario-based testing methodology. We evaluated
each product using the same scenario(s), creating a level playing feld by evaluating every
product on the same criteria.
Vendor surveys. Forrester surveyed vendors on their capabilities as they relate to the evaluation
criteria. Once we analyzed the completed vendor surveys, we conducted vendor calls to clarify
and confrm their products capabilities.
Customer reference calls. To validate product and vendor qualifcations, Forrester also
conducted reference calls with two of each vendors current customers.
FOR APPLICATION DEVELOPMENT & DELIVERY PROFESSIONALS
The Forrester Wave: Application Life-Cycle Management, Q4 2012 18
2012, Forrester Research, Inc. Reproduction Prohibited October 23, 2012
The Forrester Wave Methodology
We conduct primary research to develop a list of vendors that meet our criteria to be evaluated
in this market. From that initial pool of vendors, we then narrow our fnal list. We choose these
vendors based on: 1) product ft; 2) customer success; and 3) Forrester client demand. We eliminate
vendors that have limited customer references and products that dont ft the scope of our evaluation.
Afer examining past research, user need assessments, and vendor and expert interviews, we develop
the initial evaluation criteria. To evaluate the vendors and their products against our set of criteria, we
gather details of product qualifcations through a combination of lab evaluations, questionnaires,
demos, and/or discussions with client references. We send evaluations to the vendors for their review,
and we adjust the evaluations to provide the most accurate view of vendor oferings and strategies.
We set default weightings to refect our analysis of the needs of large user companies and/or
other scenarios as outlined in the Forrester Wave document and then score the vendors based
on a clearly defned scale. Tese default weightings are intended only as a starting point, and we
encourage readers to adapt the weightings to ft their individual needs through the Excel-based
tool. Te fnal scores generate the graphical depiction of the market based on current ofering,
strategy, and market presence. Forrester intends to update vendor evaluations regularly as product
capabilities and vendor strategies evolve.
ENDNOTES
1
Forresters research indicates that the dependence on sofware to achieve business outcomes will only
continue through the next decade. Terefore, while packaged applications will continue to be important,
sofware development and delivery for building new applications, customizing packaged systems, or
performing custom integrations will be critical for bridging the gap between sofware capabilities
and business needs. See the January 30, 2012, BT 2020: To Thrive In The Empowered Era, Youll Need
Software, Software Everywhere report.
2
Te previous Forrester Wave contained many similar questions but focused more narrowly on Agile team
support. See the May 5, 2010, The Forrester Wave: Agile Development Management Tools, Q2 2010
report.
Forrester Research, Inc. (Nasdaq: FORR) is an independent research company that provides pragmatic and forward-thinking advice to
global leaders in business and technology. Forrester works with professionals in 17 key roles at major companies providing proprietary
research, customer insight, consulting, events, and peer-to-peer executive programs. For more than 29 years, Forrester has been making
IT, marketing, and technology industry leaders successful every day. For more information, visit www.forrester.com. 60080
Forrester Focuses On
Application Development & Delivery Professionals
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ANDREA DAVIES, client persona representing Market Insights Professionals
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