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PLM: Synergies from Merging Product and Application Lifecycle Management
Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) is the process of managing the lifecycle associated with building software, that include tools for managing requirements, architecture, coding, testing, tracking, and release management. Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) is the process of managing the entire lifecycle of a product from its conception, through design and manufacture, to service and disposal.
Both ALM and PLM deal with keeping track of and managing project details, people, data and processes. ALM typically is applied to software, and PLM is applied to hardware, but there are strong parallels between the two approaches, and because of these similarities, there is now a movement afoot to try to bring the two approaches closer together. There’s also the realization that so many hardware products are now also tightly intertwined with software, that it is hard to separate the two worlds. Charles Krueger, CEO of BigLever Software, commented that “It is hard to tell now if software or hardware will fulfill a requirement.”
The Open Services for Lifecycle Collaboration (OSLC) organization has created a PLM workgroup to help implement an open standard for the merging of ALM and PLM. Part of the motivation behind the effort is to ultimately reduce costs. Projects that have both software and hardware components are more efficiently managed as a whole, rather than as two separate projects that ultimately must be merged and must interact. The group was started with backing from IBM and GM. GM’s experience with the OnStar in-vehicle communication system was part of the motivator behind the idea of unifying the two approaches.
The merging of PLM witgh ALM is something that appears to be inevitable. “You have two life cycles running independently when they really should be running together. Ultimately, they’re one product,” said Krueger.
