Your ALM Summer Reading List: 3 More ALM Books Worth a Look
Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) continues to be a hot topic, especially with the growing movement toward DevOps. The subject has certainly evolved, as clearly demonstrated by the blend of ALM books examined here. There's a relatively basic title for those first getting involved in ALM, and far more specific and in-depth titles on applying ALM at a deeper level with TFS 2015, and even ALM specifically for APIs—nothing like a little light summer reading on the beach.
Check out our earlier post on ALM books here!
This is a relatively basic guide to the concepts of ALM. If you're somewhat new to the concept of applying ALM techniques and processes, this is a good entry. The introduction does well in describing both the concept of ALM and what you can get out of this book. "ALM is an area that spans everything from requirements specifications to retirement of an IT-system or application. Because its techniques allow you to deal with the process of developing applications across many areas of responsibility and across many different disciplines, the benefits and effects of ALM techniques used on your project can be wide-ranging and pronounced.
In this book, author Joachim Rossberg will show you what ALM is and why it matters. He will also show you how you can assess your current situation and how you can use this assessment to create the road ahead for improving or implementing your own ALM process across all of your team's development efforts. Beginning Application Lifecycle Management can be implemented on any platform. This book will use Microsoft Team Foundation Server as a foundation in many examples, but the key elements are platform independent and you'll find the book written in a platform agnostic way."
Beginning Application Lifecycle Management covers the following topics:
- What is application lifecycle management (ALM)
- Implementing an ALM process
- Tips and techniques for greater control of development efforts
- How to implement an agile framework into your ALM process
- How to achieve traceability and visibility
- How to automate your ALM process
Team Foundation Server (TFS) and Visual Studio Team Services (VSTS) are the foundations of most development efforts.
Agile Project Management using Team Foundation Server 2015 clearly and thoroughly demonstrates agile and ALM concepts and how to use them along with the stalwart TFS/VSTS.
Agile Project Management using Team Foundation Server 2015 will show you "how you can use TFS/VSTS to implement many agile practices and how they fit into a well-thought-out ALM implementation. The book also shows how an agile product owner can work with TFS/VSTS to setup an agile project from scratch and how to continue using TFS/VSTS throughout the whole project to track progress, create and refine the backlog, and work with Kanban and Scrum Task boards. Keeping track of progress is important in any project. TFS/VSTS includes many tools which will help you to track key metrics in an agile project. Many useful reports are available out of the box, and the TFS extensibility offers several ways to further customize reporting to fit your needs."
Agile Project Management using Team Foundation Server 2015 goes in-depth on the following topics:
- Agile Concepts and Processes
- How TFS/VSO can supports agile processes from start to finish
- Customizing TFS/VSTS functions to better support your specific efforts
- How to set up an agile project from scratch and manage it over its lifecycle
APIs are critical for building apps. Those sets of subroutine definitions, protocols, and tools are building blocks for modern apps. This unique eBook gives you an in-depth look at how to apply ALM and agile processes specifically to your APIs. Here’s how the authors describe this uniquely focused title:
"The API Lifecycle presents an agile process for managing the life of an API—the secret sauce to help establish quality standards for all API and microservices providers. This knowledge informs one on … a holistic model of the API as a business and product. From conception to deprecation, this handbook outlines unique step-by-step instructions on market research, strategy, construction, promotion, and updating your API. The API lifecycle diagram is an agile process for managing the life of an API and is composed of four distinct phases: Analysis, Development, Operations, and Retirement. Our eBook expands these concepts, grounding theories in knowledge collected during the Nordic APIs 2015 API lifecycle themed conference tour, events which brought API industry experts together to discuss different strategies throughout varying stages of the API lifecycle. We also delved deeper into these ideas within our blog, interviewing leading web API figures, and performing additional research to create a comprehensive view of the lifecycle for a commercialized web API."
Got any favorite ALM books? Drop me a line at llow@1105media.com!
Posted by Lafe Low on 08/03/2017