4 steps towards Complete Application Lifecycle Management
For Adaptavist the key to helping clients solve specific technical issues or achieve particular business goals is to look at the bigger picture first. When a well-known pharmaceutical giant engaged us to trouble-shoot their web development platform, this philosophy was central to our approach.
Our client was undergoing a huge transformation programme which impacted on all aspects of their business worldwide. During the course of this period of strategic change their IT infrastructure had come under serious scrutiny and they wanted to hear Adaptavist's recommendations on how to better manage their technology and application lifecycle to deliver them greater efficiency, agility and commercial advantage.
Seeking control of application development
The starting point was the client's web development application. Originally deployed to give the company more control, the geographical spread of their teams, poor communication and the technical shortcomings of the platform itself, all meant that the business had low visibility of its global project portfolio, an inability to plan properly and, ironically, a damaging lack of control.
Adaptavist began by carrying out a thorough review, interviewing the key stakeholders across the business to understand what makes it tick, both technically and strategically. During the course of our workshops, meetings and conference calls we identified a number of fundamental issues from processes to politics that were at the root of their development platform problems. Widespread duplication of effort and a worrying lack of ownership were two of the more immediate concerns.
Comprehensive recommendations for Complete Application Lifecycle Management
The outcome of our three week information-gathering exercise was a comprehensive report detailing our findings, accompanied by an in-depth set of recommendations for resolving the current issues with the web development system plus a suggested roadmap the future. These recommendations included:
- Addressing the ownership question by placing one person, with the necessary authority for driving change, in charge of both the business and technical streams.
- Introducing a more rigorous project review process with greater focus on the entire application lifecycle.
- Adopting a formal vendor selection process in order to ensure suitability and competence of suppliers.
- Deploying a new and more robust set of development tools to enable genuine application lifecycle management.
Equipped for the future
At the heart of our proposal was a range of processes and tools that not only met the immediate needs of the client but equipped them with the necessary know-how and technical support to continue the strategic and technical overhaul of their IT and applications infrastructure.
To learn more about how Adaptavist helped our client start the journey to Complete Application Lifecycle Management (CALM) download the full case study now.
