Development management with

HP Application Lifecycle Management

software and new HP Development
Tool Integrations
Business white paper
Table of contents
Executive summary.................................................3
Key ALM challenges: collaboration and traceability...3
Collaboration.........................................................3
Traceability............................................................3
The need for an end-to-end solution...........................3
HP ALM for application development and delivery.....4
The HP ALM solution: integrations and use cases ......5
Tasktop connector...................................................5
Use case: accessing requirements..............................5
Use case: accessing defects......................................6
Synchronizer APIs and REST APIs .............................7
TFS synchronizer ....................................................7
Use case: synchronizing defects................................7
Partner ecosystem...................................................7
CollabNet..............................................................7
Tasktop..................................................................7
AccuRev.................................................................8
Perforce.................................................................8
ElectricCommander.................................................8
Key takeaways.......................................................8
Executive summary
In today’s globalized economy, the participants in
the software development process often work in
different regions of the world using different tools
and processes. This new reality makes collaboration
among teams difficult and limits traceability of
the actions taken by different participants in the
development process.
HP Application Lifecycle Management (ALM)
software and new HP Development Tool Integrations
solve these challenges. With the end-to-end
HP solution, participants in the development process
can use their own familiar tools while working in a
common ALM environment that promotes consistent,
repeatable, and standardized software development
and QA processes.
Key ALM challenges: collaboration
and traceability
Mergers and acquisitions, outsourcing, and the trend
toward globalized work teams have created new
challenges for ALM. Gone are the days when key
stakeholders in the development process worked in the
same physical locations and used the same toolsets.
In today’s world, development teams can be located
virtually anywhere in the world and can use diverse
toolsets and different processes, and the information
related to a development project can be scattered
across multiple systems. This set of circumstances
creates ongoing collaboration and traceability
challenges for organizations that manage the
development process and the rest of the lifecycle of
software applications. In addition, this fragmentation
in the development process limits agility, predictability, What’s needed is an end-to-end ALM solution that
and change readiness.
Let’s consider the example of a fictional organization,
Global Company Inc.
Collaboration
Within Global Company, the stakeholders in the
development process work in different regions of
the world. Subject-matter experts (SMEs) are in
Europe, developers are in the Americas, and quality
assurance (QA) specialists are in Asia. The differences
in time zones, physical locations, and systems make
collaboration difficult.
The members of the extended development team don’t
have the benefit of face-to-face meetings that would
typically be part of the agile software development
process when team members are based in the same
physical location. A lack of close collaboration leads
to project confusion and missed deadlines.
Traceability
Different development teams within Global Company
use different software tools and development
methodologies, creating traceability challenges.
Team A uses Java and Eclipse tools and agile
processes, while Team B uses Microsoft ® Visual
Studio and waterfall processes.
In the absence of a comprehensive ALM system,
disjointed communications and a lack of traceability
lead to lost productivity and project delays. Some
stakeholders aren’t aware of the identification of a
software defect or the changes made in response
to it. This leads to costly rework later in the
development process.
The need for an end-to-end solution
It might seem that many of these challenges could
be solved by standardization on a common set of
development tools and processes. But the reality is,
developers are most productive with the tools and
processes they know well, and they aren’t eager to
change. Shifting to new tools and processes would
be disruptive to both people and productivity.
provides a common management platform that
can be shared by all project stakeholders and that
allows individual development teams to use their
tools and processes of choice. Today, HP offers
this end-to-end ALM solution, which leverages the
capabilities of the HP ALM suite and new HP ALM
Development Tool Integrations.
3
 Figure 1. The core application lifecycle
The ALM lifecycle encompasses requirements management, development management, and quality management.

Application Lifecycle Management

Project Planning and Tracking Enterprise Release Management

Requirements Development Quality

Management Management Management

Requirements Requirements Development Defect Secure

Functional Performance Security
Definition Management Integrations Management Development

Foundation
Process Standardization Extendibility
Traceability (i.e. Waterfall, Agila) Reporting
(Open APIs)

HP ALM for application development Figure 2. End-to-end support for the ALM process
HP ALM covers all of the steps in application development.
and delivery
HP has provided software solutions to help IT Requirements
organizations solve the hard problems surrounding
the delivery of applications for nearly 20 years.
Organizations around the world use HP ALM to
govern software quality processes and to automate Tasks Tests
QA testing and application delivery across IT and
application environments. HP ALM enables project
HP ALM
teams to use consistent, repeatable, and standardized
software development and QA.
Source
Code Defects
HP ALM includes diverse software testing tools used
by QA specialists. It also includes a set of tools that
SMEs use to manage requirements in the application
development processes. For software developers,
Builds
HP offers a growing portfolio of connectors that link
HP ALM with common tools used in the development
process. These include tools that connect to popular
The HP ALM platform allows stakeholders to add
integrated development environments (IDEs) that
metadata to link artifacts for traceability—linking
developers use to write code; source code repository
requirements to tasks, source code, builds, defects,
check-ins and associated change management tools;
tests, and configurations. With HP ALM, team
and tools for building and deploying applications.
members can create requirements, build the code,
Through these integrations, HP ALM provides test it, and manage its release all within a common
end‑to-end support for the ALM process and the environment that documents and traces all the steps
key stakeholders within it. The HP ALM platform in the process.
encompasses all of the steps in application
Along the way, HP ALM automates the handoff
development, including the definition of requirements,
of data between business analysts, developers,
development of software, testing and identification of
and QA specialists. It enables the bidirectional
defects, return to development to address defects, and
synchronization of requirements, defects, and test
ongoing QA work.
artifacts between the HP ALM platform and the IDEs
used by developers. Each team can use its tools of
choice, while working collaboratively in a common
ALM environment to define, develop, build, and
test software.

4
 The HP ALM solution: integrations
and use cases
Tasktop connector
Tasktop Technologies created and leads the Eclipse
Mylyn project, which provides the task-focused
interface technology that integrates ALM systems.
The HP ALM Tasktop connector provides bidirectional
synchronization between SCCM, build, and quality
tools. It has two versions: free and commercial.
Use case: accessing requirements
Challenge: Developers working in their home
IDEs need access to requirements information
to turn the user stories developed by SMEs into
development tasks. The requirements are created in
the HP ALM platform.
Solution: The HP ALM Tasktop connector integrates
the development environment with HP ALM.
Use case: Without leaving their familiar IDEs,
developers access requirements information from
HP ALM. The developers break the requirements into
development tasks, write the source code, and check
the code into a repository.
Via HP ALM, all the stakeholders on the project—
including SMEs, QA specialists, developers, and
project managers—can see the source code and
review details on the tasks the developers completed.

Figure 3. Keyword-based
search
HP ALM allows users to search
based on defects or requirements.

Figure 4. Bidirectional
synchronization of
requirements
HP ALM enables the bidirectional
synchronization of requirements,
defects, and test artifacts between
the HP ALM platform and the IDEs
used by developers.

5
 Use case: accessing defects
Challenge: Developers working in their home
IDEs need timely access to defects identified by
QA specialists.
Solution: The HP ALM Tasktop connector integrates
the development environment with HP ALM.
Use case: Developers receive messages alerting
them to software defects identified by QA specialists.
Without leaving their familiar IDEs, the developers
access the defects in HP ALM. The developers verify
the defects, write code to correct the problems, and
check the code into a common source code repository.
Via HP ALM, all the stakeholders on the project—
including SMEs, QA specialists, developers, and
project managers—can see the source code fixes,
review associated notes from the developers, and
gain access to full revision history for the software
under development. By linking the defects to
associated artifacts, HP ALM establishes a high
level of traceability for the steps taken by different
participants in the development project.

Figure 5. Accessing defects

stored in HP ALM.
HP ALM allows developers
to access defects stored in
HP ALM without leaving their IDEs.

Figure 6. Task-focused
interface to work on defects
HP ALM’s task-focused interface
makes it easy for developers to
retrieve the context of defects
stored in HP ALM.

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Figure 7. Linking defects to
source code
HP ALM links defects to source
code and related metadata.
Synchronizer APIs and REST APIs
Development and QA teams often work in different
locations and use diverse tools and moreover,
information is scattered. This creates the need to
synchronize the use of third-party tools. HP ALM
responds to this need with a set of APIs for
extensibility. These APIs enable the synchronization
of development and QA activities in a distributed
development environment.
TFS synchronizer
HP ALM Development Tool Integrations include
a synchronizer for Microsoft Team Foundation
Server (TFS). TFS is a set of tools and technologies
that enable teams to collaborate and coordinate their
efforts on building .NET software applications. Visual
Studio is one of the components of TFS, and many
.NET developers use Visual Studio Team Suite to write
source code. Most activity in TFS revolves around
work items, similar to tasks in the Eclipse world. A
defect or requirement can be broken down into work
items, which then can be assigned to developers.
Use case: synchronizing defects
A tester opens a defect in HP ALM, which is stored in
the HP ALM repository. The administrator configures
TFS adapter to map HP ALM and TFS schemas—
identifying which fields to be synchronized. Once the
adapter is configured and active, defects stored in
HP ALM are synchronized with bugs in Microsoft TFS.
The bugs are broken down into work items in TFS.
Developers finish the work items and mark the
TFS bug as “closed,” and the status “Closed” will
automatically be reflected in HP ALM.
For a look at other synchronizers available for
HP ALM and HP Quality Center, see: http://update.
external.hp.com/qualitycenter/qc110/sync/
almsynchronizer/index.html
Partner ecosystem
HP works closely with its partner ecosystem to provide
integrations to third-party software and popular
development tools, many of which are open sourced
or commoditized. These integrations are designed to
bring developer metadata into HP ALM as naturally
as possible, while allowing developers to use their
tools of choice.
CollabNet
HP ALM and CollabNet TeamForge connector
provide customers with an end-to-end ALM solution
that supports software application development
from requirements definition, through development
and testing, to release. The integration provides
bidirectional synchronization of requirements, epics,
user stories, defects, tests, and more. Certified
integration software is available as a free open-source
download at www.collab.net/HP.
Tasktop
Tasktop connector, built on Mylyn’s task-focused
interface technology, for HP ALM and HP Quality
Center improves developer productivity from
requirements through defects by providing Eclipse IDE
integration and interoperability with integrations with
leading commercial and open source ALM platforms.
To learn more about this connector, visit:
www.tasktop.com/hp.
7
 AccuRev
AccuBridge for HP ALM provides out-of-the-box
integration between AccuRev software and the issue
management functionality of HP ALM. This allows you
to quickly leverage the power of AccuRev software
change and configuration management with your
existing HP ALM workflow. The result enhances
your return on investment by increasing the agility,
reliability, and quality of your distributed, software
development environment.
Perforce
P4DTG, the Perforce Defect Tracking Gateway, allows
information to be shared between Perforce jobs
(typically bug fixes and enhancement requests) and
an external defect tracking system. All the technology
necessary to implement an integrated solution comes
built into P4DTG.
P4DTG includes fully supported plug-ins for HP Quality
Center 9.0, 9.2, and 10.0. This bidirectional integration
maps and replicates Perforce jobs, and any associated
change lists, to issues in HP ALM’s defect tracking tool.
Jobs then comply with the workflow defined in the
defect tracker.
ElectricCommander
ElectricCommander, an enterprise-class build
automation framework for the entire software
build‑test-deploy process, now features integration
with HP ALM. The technology integration speeds
the overall development cycle and enhances quality
through early, more frequent testing and improved
collaboration between developers and QA teams.
With the integration of ElectricCommander with
HP ALM, automated test sets defined and selected
by QA are exposed within the ElectricCommander
interface, so they can be run at any time by
developers—on a scheduled basis, when triggered by
a specific event, or on demand. Results of the tests are
maintained in both systems, so everyone on the team
has access to status and trend information. Software
development organizations gain better code quality,
faster time to market, and more productive QA teams.
Key takeaways
Participants in the software development process
often work in different regions of the world and use
different tools and processes. This set of circumstances
makes collaboration among teams difficult and
limits traceability of the actions taken by different
participants in the development process.
HP ALM and new HP Development Tool Integrations
solve these challenges. The HP solution provides a
common management platform that can be shared
by all project stakeholders, while allowing individual
development teams to use their tools and processes
of choice.
By enabling all participants in the development
process to work in common ALM environment, the
HP ALM solution promotes consistent, repeatable,
and standardized software development and QA
processes and helps organizations deliver high-quality
applications efficiently and effectively.

HP ALM provides a complete application lifecycle management and automation platform. To learn more,
visit www.hp.com/go/alm.

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© Copyright 2011 Hewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P. The information contained herein is subject to change without notice. The only
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4AA3-2605ENW, Created February 2011