Visual Studio Online- The Application LiveCycle Management (ALM)

Introduction

An ALM solution allows companies to easily manage all of the life cycles of the applications developments. One of the big advantages is to reduce time cycles of designing applications, to integrate development and testers teams and more easily adopt Agile Practices (like Scrum). According to a study by Gartner in February 2015 (http://gtnr.it/1Td1oLg), Microsoft is a leader in ALM solutions, especially if the development tools are present in your company ecosystem. Since few years, Trasys uses the Microsoft infrastructure for all .NET development. And since few months, we migrated to the Microsoft Cloud Portal: TFS Visual Studio Online (https://tfs.visualstudio.com). Visual Studio Online (VSO) is based on the core of Team Foundation Server (TFS) with additional Cloud services. This solution is completely free for small teams (5 persons) or for project managers who want to manage the team works (tasks, bugs, etc.).

Code - Host your source code in the Cloud

Usable by some developers or by thousands of people, this module saves and log your source code in a secure way, based on GIT or TFVC repositories, including branching or merging features, and commands to edit online code online. You can annotate the source code to discuss with your colleagues about needed changes in the code.

Work - Centralize your development tasks

Quickly organize the planning, manage and monitor your work for all Products Backlog and all teams, using tools fully integrated with your development environment and your Agile planning. Follow the overall progress from Kanban boards, while your team focus on current tasks, or rapid progression with a board of Scrum tasks.

Build - Compile your applications into the cloud

Create and manage the build process to compile and test your applications automatically in the cloud: manually or through an automated continuous integration strategy.

Check, deploy and monitor your applications

Integrate testers, product managers and other stakeholders directly in the validation process of your software. Automate tests and deployment tasks. Automatically collect interesting operational data, as well as information on performances and the use of mobile clients.

Conclusions

If you need to choose an ALM solution or need to migrate your existing projects in the Cloud, Visual Studio Online is for you. Regardless the size of your company, Visual Studio Online will significantly reduce the complexity of management and environment updates, and you will certainly save money.