Chapter 1
Introduction to Application Lifecycle Management with Visual Studio 2013

What's in this chapter?

• Defining application lifecycle management
• Learning about the Visual Studio 2013 product family
• Seeing ALM in action using Visual Studio Ultimate 2013

In June of 1999, Microsoft started to re-evaluate how Visual Studio was being used as part of the software development process. Microsoft was continuing to serve the needs of an individual programmer through the highly productive “code-focused rapid-application-development” features of Visual Studio, but wasn't doing much to help programmers work together as a team. And what about software architects—how should they be working with the programming team? And what about testers and project managers?

Many teams had begun to set up their own solutions using a mixture of third-party, in-house, and vendor-provided tools to address such challenges as version control, bug tracking, and team communications. But this mishmash of tools can be tricky to set up and maintain, and even more difficult to integrate and report across. Microsoft sought to address this challenge by providing an integrated set of tools designed to address the needs of the entire software development team. Thus, Visual Studio Team System was born, and was first released with the Visual Studio 2005 product line.

At the heart of Team System, Team Foundation Server was created to provide a hub for all members of the development team to collaborate. Team Foundation Server is uniquely positioned from its predecessors across the industry by being the first tool of its kind built from the ground up to provide an integrated solution for many capabilities that had historically been offered as standalone tools. Team Foundation Server provides a unified solution for storing source code (along with a history of changes), work item tracking (which can include bugs, requirements, and so on), and automated builds. By providing a single solution with all of these capabilities, Microsoft delivered the ability to link all these artifacts for end-to-end traceability, reporting, process enforcement, and project management.

Team System also included “client” functionality, which surfaced in the various editions of Visual Studio development tools. Visual Studio seamlessly integrated with Team Foundation Server, but much of this tooling could also be used independently or with third-party source control solutions. Visual Studio Team System also introduced role-specific tooling that lived outside of the core Visual Studio development environment by recognizing that team members such as project managers are oftentimes more comfortable using tools such as Excel or Project, both of which could be used to manage and track work that lived in Team Foundation Server.

Team System was built from a foundation of tools and technologies that Microsoft had been using internally for many years to build some of the most complex software projects ever undertaken. Team System appealed not only to programmers, but to all members of the development team—architects, application developers, database developers, and project managers.

Three years later, Visual Studio Team System 2008 evolved from the previous version to include even more tools and functionality for all members of the project team to use. Two years after that, Visual Studio 2010 added even more functionality, including an entirely new set of tools for generalist testers (also referred to as manual testers), bringing a new audience of prospective users into the same set of tooling used by the rest of the team.

Application Lifecycle Management

Along with the release of Visual Studio 2010, Microsoft also stopped using the sub-brand “Team System” to describe these capabilities. Instead, Microsoft started referring to these tools as the application lifecycle management (also referred to as ALM) capabilities of Visual Studio. Application lifecycle management is a term that has gained momentum in the development industry to describe the way an application is managed from its conception, through its creation and deployment, to its eventual retirement.

It is important to note that application lifecycle management is a more comprehensive concept than its popular predecessor, software development lifecycle (SDLC). SDLC is primarily focused on the core coding activities that comprise the creation of an application's life, beginning with a requirement for an application and ending when that application is built and delivered. Application lifecycle management recognizes that requirements aren't simply born out of thin air. They evolve based on business needs, or ideas for new opportunities, and stakeholders who are considered external to the development team may still play a role during the development of an application in helping to refine requirements and provide feedback on implementations. Application lifecycle management also recognizes that a development team's job isn't done the moment they hand off a “finished” application. The development team will likely be called upon to help troubleshoot the application when things go wrong in the deployed environment, or to create subsequent versions of the application based on feedback from users or analytics from the operations team. Visual Studio itself has matured over time to grow from being a tool targeted squarely at programmers during the software development lifecycle to becoming a true solution for end-to-end application lifecycle management.

Visual Studio 2013 Product Lineup

Table 1.1 outlines the product lineup for Visual Studio 2013.

Table 1.1 Visual Studio 2013 Product Lineup

Visual Studio Premium contains all the functionality of Visual Studio Professional, and Visual Studio Ultimate contains all the functionality of Visual Studio Premium. Visual Studio Premium and Ultimate also include all of the functionality available in Visual Studio Test Professional.

There are a few additional standalone tools and technologies that comprise the Visual Studio 2013 family that are not listed. For example, in Chapter 10 you learn about the new Microsoft Feedback Client, which stakeholders use to provide rich feedback about an application that is stored in Team Foundation Server. In Chapter 3, you learn about Team Explorer Everywhere, which Eclipse developers use to work with Team Foundation Server. You learn about these additional tools throughout this book, but Table 1.1 showcases the primary products that Microsoft markets as part of the Visual Studio 2013 product family.

For a detailed breakdown of the functionality available in each product, a comparison chart is available at www.visualstudio.com.

NOTE

Software licensing is potentially a complex topic. It is important to ensure that the members of your team are adequately licensed to use Visual Studio and the related technologies that make up your development and testing environments. The Visual Studio Licensing whitepaper attempts to synthesize all of the licensing requirements for Visual Studio, Team Foundation Server, and related technologies into an easy-to-read format. You can find the latest version of the Visual Studio Licensing whitepaper at http://www.microsoft.com/visualstudio/licensing.

Application Lifecycle Management Challenges

Software developers share common challenges,...