Application Development: It’s All About Communication

It’s a software-driven world, one where we rely on a sea of apps to manage, coordinate, and support nearly every aspect of our lives.

In this world, established markets, like banks, airlines, hotels, and taxi services, are seeing their business models disrupted by agile newcomers boasting an “app first” mentality.

So, what qualities do these nimble startups have in common? In most cases, teams from the business and IT sides of the house work closely around a single, well-defined goal. And sometimes, business people are actually the ones who design and develop the apps.

Speed and innovation clearly power success in today’s market. And to keep pace with this new breed of competition, established organizations must think and act like a startup. And to do so as effectively as possible, it’s crucial to find an optimal way to coordinate people, technology, and process.

People

A clear understanding of a project’s requirements and open communication between the business and application development teams are integral ingredients for success. And while today’s business leaders know much more about IT and application development than they did decades ago, there is still work to be done.

That’s why organizations should consider teaching business people programming concepts and showing them how to articulate their application requirements through clear “user stories.”

The same is true for application developers. The better educated they are about the businesses they support, the better equipped they’ll be to roll out applications at a speed the organization demands.

Technology

Nothing changes faster than technology. While such disruptive trends as mobility, big data, and the Internet of Things all hold promise, the pressure to transform these new capabilities into business benefits still lies on our shoulders.

One of the reasons we designed Agile Business Suite (AB Suite™) in the first place was to help developers benefit from these and other innovations. The best example is of course the replacement of our Enterprise Application Environment (EAE) framework with Microsoft® Visual Studio®.

Another example is our recent release of the Client Framework, a DataModel based interface that enables developers to create UIs using their preferred technologies, like Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) and Windows Communication Foundation (WCF).

And, the latest integration with additional elements in Microsoft Team Foundation Server (TFS), such as those for version control, test, build, and release management, opens doors to further optimize the application development process.

Process

The application development process should unite people and technology by documenting and streamlining the actions required to bring new capabilities into production. But, taking a process from idea to implementation means coordinating a potentially dizzying number of steps.

That’s where Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) comes into play. ALM starts by defining business requirements and priorities before the project is transitioned to the development team.

It emphasizes consistent communication between business and development teams throughout the project, helping developers understand the project’s timeline and if it’s necessary to move from Waterfall development to an Agile approach.

ALM also advocates for open communication between developers and testers – the closer they work, the less time it should take to test a new release. In fact, more and more organizations are building test scripts during – or even before – the development phase.

The third important communication driven by ALM happens between developers and operations specialists, a concept known as DevOps. When operations knows when a new release has to get into production – and what special requirements must be addressed – they can get ready without unneeded delays.

With the help of ALM, the application development process gains a sharpened focus on connecting people, which leads to better applications delivered at a faster pace.

AB Suite and TFS: A Strong Combination for ALM

The AB Suite team leverages the TFS package to support the communications processes – spanning idea, production, and maintenance – that support ALM. All stakeholders get a unified view of the same information, leading to a development process that is transparent to everyone involved.

For example, special dashboards enable line-of-business heads and project managers to see, at a high level, which projects are on track and which might be falling behind schedule. End users have an easy means of reporting wishes and bugs. Developers receive insight into all of the background information that’s pertinent to their specific tasks. Project managers can monitor progress and re-route work items to keep the release on schedule. Testers can track their work and report results to the appropriate stakeholders. And, operations team members have the ability to see when a release is almost ready and prepare to get it into production.

With the implementation of AB Suite in combination with TFS, organizations can embrace ALM and make it a guiding principle that results in fast cycles and a transparent development process.