Project Management: The Forgotten Piece of ALM?

By Jennifer deJong

February 15, 2006 —

From design to deployment, ALM players talk up the benefits of life-cycle tools. But when it comes to project management, they aren’t saying a word.

That’s not because project management software isn’t used for development projects. It is.

And it’s not because companies that sell ALM software don’t integrate their offerings with Microsoft Project, or the widely used project management tools from Philadelphia-based Primavera. Many do, including Borland, IBM, Microsoft, MKS and Telelogic.

So, why are ALM players silent on the subject of project management? “Project management tools have never solved the problem of why software is late, or why projects fail,” said Bill Shaw, vice president of life-cycle solutions at Telelogic.

Project management tools do a good job of producing schedules and allocating resources but a poor job of conveying development effort status, said spokesmen for ALM tools companies. That’s largely because data pertaining to software projects has traditionally been subjective.

“You can say a project is 40 percent done, but you might as well make up any number you want,” said Dave Martin, vice president of product management for MKS.

Once a project kicks off, there is no good way to measure its success, added Ashok Reddy, IBM program director for Rational brand portfolio marketing. “A developer can say a project is 100 percent compete, but defects may still be there.”

The ALM tools companies agreed project management software wasn’t written with development projects in mind. It is geared, they said, to more engineering-like efforts, where task duration tends to be predictable. Ask a carpenter how long it takes to hang Sheetrock, and you’ll get a reliable answer, said Greg Rice, a senior director of product marketing at Borland, which offers ALM tools and services. “But in software there is uncertainty about these things.”

But as top management demands better software, faster—and insists on deeper visibility into development projects—project leaders are moving beyond ad hoc estimates, importing more pertinent information, such as work tracking, requirements, change management and testing data into project management tools. Armed with accurate data from ALM offerings, project management tools can help development teams make their case to the business side of the house. “For the first time, you can explain the real impact of a change request,” said Shaw. “That enables development managers to say, ‘You have to reduce the scope of the project or extend the delivery date,’” he said.

What to Measure?
How do you get it right? It’s critical to determine which ALM data to import and which metrics collectively convey the most accurate view of a project’s overall status. “Companies struggle to figure out what makes sense,” said Martin. Usually, it’s a combination of metrics, viewed at once, in what Prashant Sridharan, a group product manager in Microsoft’s developer division, calls a velocity report. “Instead of just counting bugs, you also have to consider code coverage, and unit and load testing,” he said.

Another strategy is investigating where team members are spending the most time and looking for patterns that spell trouble, said Martin. “If you spend a lot of time investigating use cases to figure out how defects occurred, and your defect rate is still high, you have a problem,” he said. “You have to hone in on the source of the problem.”

Also important is the ability to view a project in terms of how it relates to a company’s business objectives, said IBM’s Reddy. “You may be doing great in terms of project costs. But if you don’t have the best developers assigned to the most critical projects, you are in trouble.” The best project managers can drive that process, he said.

Tools for Managing Portfolios
When it comes to running development efforts, project management tools still rule, ALM tools companies agreed. But some ALM companies are moving beyond that approach, offering software designed to oversee a portfolio of information technology projects, not just development initiatives.

Borland Software was expected to unveil one such offering on Feb. 14. The IT Management and Governance Solution includes Borland Tempo, which the company acquired from Legadaro Software last October, said Greg Rice, a senior director of product marketing at Borland.

For portfolio management, Tempo lets companies manage multiple projects simultaneously, sharing resources among them, and prioritizing tasks, he said. Borland plans to begin integrating Tempo with its ALM tools, including StarTeam (for configuration management) and CaliberRM (for requirements) in June. The company also plans to tie Tempo to its ALM suite, Core SDP, said Rice.

Like project management offerings, portfolio managers track costs, schedules, resources and progress for each project. But their real purpose is to provide a wider view of all of a company’s IT initiatives, said Ashok Reddy, IBM program director for Rational brand portfolio marketing. That helps companies identify overlaps and avoid redundant costs, he said. IBM Rational Portfolio Manager, released late last year, also includes best practices advice, and is tied to the company’s Rational Software Development Platform.

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