{"id":11296,"date":"2022-01-18T19:10:11","date_gmt":"2022-01-19T01:10:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/threecloud.wpengine.com\/?p=11296"},"modified":"2023-05-01T21:10:25","modified_gmt":"2023-05-02T02:10:25","slug":"why-alm-matters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/3cloudsolutions.com\/resources\/why-alm-matters\/","title":{"rendered":"Why ALM Matters"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I recently heard a podcast where <a href=\"http:\/\/www.davidchappell.com\/\">David Chappell<\/a> said something that piqued my interest. Paraphrasing, his thinking went something like this.<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>Given that\u2026<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Business processes support what the business does.<\/li>\n<li>Those processes that give a competitive advantage are the most important.<\/li>\n<li>Those important processes are always supported by custom software.<\/li>\n<li>Custom software is the output of the Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) process.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>We can assume that the success of a company is fundamentally linked to how well it does ALM.<\/p>\n<p>That\u2019s quite a statement. My kneejerk reaction was to take issue with the third point; business processes conferring competitive advantage are always supported by custom software. However, I thought more about it and I\u2019ve come around some. I still think \u201calways\u201d is an overstatement, but \u201coften\u201d or \u201cusually\u201d might be appropriate.<\/p>\n<p>It took me more time than I\u2019d care to admit that I missed the point. I was hung up on the wording and dismissed the core idea.<\/p>\n<h3 id=\"lookingatitfromadifferentangle\">Looking at it from a different angle<\/h3>\n<p>Instead of David\u2019s set of statements, let\u2019s think about this assertion.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>A company only writes custom software to gain a competitive advantage. Nothing else justifies the costs and risks associated.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Competitive advantage comes in two main varieties: comparative and differential. Comparative advantage is efficiency. Can you do something at lower cost than your competitors can? If so, you can undercut their prices or have a larger margin. Differential advantage means exactly that: Are you different? Is your company doing something no one else can do? Did you invent a new product? Is your customer service better?<\/p>\n<p>So how does custom software create the advantage? Here are a few examples<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>You\u2019re writing an inventory app that will reduce stock on hand and speed delivery<\/li>\n<li>You\u2019ve created an innovative talent recruitment and retention system.<\/li>\n<li>You\u2019re planning a custom application that will streamline a task that takes three off-the-shelf products.<\/li>\n<li>You only need a small subset of features from commercial offerings and are writing your own to avoid reduce cost.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Moreover, creating competitive advantage with custom applications makes the advantage harder to copy.<\/p>\n<p>Custom software is expensive and risky. It takes time to plan, develop, test, deploy, train, support, etc. Therefore, if it isn\u2019t giving you a comparative or differential advantage, it isn\u2019t worth it.<\/p>\n<h3 id=\"whyalmmatters\">Why ALM Matters<\/h3>\n<p>So custom software is written to confer competitive advantage, but can only confer that advantage if it is delivered, functional, usable, cost-effective, and timely. Given that, organizations with quality ALM will gain more advantage and be more competitive those without.<\/p>\n<p>That\u2019s why ALM matters. The success of a company <strong>is<\/strong> fundamentally linked to how well it can produce the custom applications that create an advantage. Failed software projects are failed attempts to better compete.<\/p>\n<h4 id=\"references\">References<\/h4>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.davidchappell.com\/\">David Chappell\u2019s website<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/dotnetrocks.com\/default.aspx?showNum=956\">.Net Rocks Episode 956<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I recently heard a podcast where David Chappell said something that piqued my interest. Paraphrasing,&mldr;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":21,"featured_media":11370,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"content-type":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[292,264],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11296","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-app-innovation","category-enterprise-apps","topics-blog"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/3cloudsolutions.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11296","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/3cloudsolutions.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/3cloudsolutions.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/3cloudsolutions.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/21"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/3cloudsolutions.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11296"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/3cloudsolutions.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11296\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/3cloudsolutions.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11370"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/3cloudsolutions.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11296"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/3cloudsolutions.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11296"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/3cloudsolutions.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11296"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}