Why application lifecycle management matters -- Responding to change -- Understanding the need for business software -- Today's business environment and the problems we face -- Project succes: what does the research say? -- Introduction to application lifecycle management -- Aspects of the ALM process -- Four ways of looking at ALM -- Three pillars of traditional application lifecycle management -- A brief history of ALM tools and concepts -- ALM and PPM -- Development processes and frameworks -- The waterfall model Rational unified process (RUP) -- Manifiesto for agile software development -- Extreme programming -- Scrum -- The kanban method -- Choosing the process -- Intoduction to scrum and agile concepts -- The scrum process -- Roles in scrum -- Definition of done -- Agile requirements and estimation -- ALM assessments -- Microsoft application platform optimization (APO) model -- APO maturity levels -- Aplication platform capability assessment -- Starting the Microsoft web assessment -- Visibility and traceability -- The importance of trust and visibility -- What is visibility? -- Why do you need visibility? -- An agile approach to visibility -- ALM 2.0 and visibility -- Atomating visibility -- Automating visibility -- Traceability -- ALM 2.0+ supports software traceability -- Why traceability is important -- Agile frameworks and traceability -- Automation of processes -- What is process automation -- Things to consider before automating processes -- Work planning -- Task management -- Reporting that resolves estimates and actuals -- AlM 2.0 + enables good planning functions -- Support for historical data -- Collaboration -- DevOps -- Engaging the business side -- Sharing information -- Metics in ALM -- Project-management metrics -- Metrics for developer practices -- Metrics for software testing -- Metrics for release management -- Introducion to ALM platforms -- Atlassian -- IBM -- Microsoft -- CollabNet -- Summary