In this first part of a two-part series, Mario Moreira writes that a reasonable application lifecycle management (ALM) product will have a common user interface for utilizing the ALM functionality. It will also include a meta-model and process engine to parse and share information across and amongst the various functions within the ALM framework. These technical needs must be accompanied by a strong business case for delivering higher customer value and new approaches for seamless integration.

The year ahead likely will be filled with unprecedented challenges in terms of both technology and business demands. While technology and business needs are certainly complex, the people and personality issues may be even more challenging to deal with. This article will get you started with tackling some of these people-related challenges that you will likely encounter in the coming year.

In his CM: The Next Generation Series, Joe Farah examines the following three steps that deal with process: defining the process, automating the process, and improving process quality. When a process is automated, problems can be repeated and are much easier to diagnose and correct. As the problems are corrected, we attain higher quality.

In his CM: The Next Generation Series, Joe Farah writes that there are many reasons that organizations or government agencies use distributed development. Whatever the reason, a software development team, and indeed the entire product team, needs to do all it can to ensure that development proceeds smoothly.