* [Topics](/en/topics "Topics") * What is application lifecycle management (ALM)? What is application lifecycle management (ALM)? =============================================== Updated June 10, 2025•*4*-minute read Copy URL Jump to section --------------- OverviewALM stagesALM toolsWhy choose Red Hat? Overview -------- Application lifecycle management (ALM) is the combination of people, tools, and processes that manage the life cycle of an application from conception to end of life. ALM is made up of several disciplines that have often been separated under legacy development processes, such as a waterfall development method, project management, requirements management, software development, testing and quality assurance, deployment, and maintenance. Application lifecycle management intersects with the discipline of [platform engineering](/en/topics/platform-engineering/what-is-platform-engineering), and complements [agile methodology](/en/topics/devops/what-is-agile-methodology) and [DevOps](/en/topics/devops) in support of enabling teams to collaborate more effectively for your organization. Adopting ALM also leads to [continuous delivery](/en/topics/devops/what-is-ci-cd) of software and updates with frequent releases, sometimes as often as several per day, as opposed to new releases only coming every few months or once a year. Application lifecycle management provides a framework for software development while also helping you to manage your software over time. Following ALM practices uses a lightweight, pre-established plan and requirements to turn an idea into an application. When approaching software development with ALM, you need to consider the whole lifespan of the application. Maintenance and future updates should be taken into account, including when the application should be retired and replaced. By bringing these pieces together, ALM leads to faster deployments, improved visibility into your workflow, higher-quality products, and increased developer satisfaction. ALM stages ---------- ALM helps give visibility to the development process. Because the process is integrated, you can see what progress has been made, which steps still need to be completed, how long things are taking, which tests have been completed, and more. ### Application governance Governance describes the decisions made about an application. When you begin the process of creating a new application, you’ll start with the initial idea for the app and also need to consider how it relates to your business needs and goals. This contributes to the requirements for the new application, which need to be defined and agreed upon as part of the governance stage. Resource management, data and security, and user access are additional components of application governance. Standardization of these processes leads to the ability to automate governance. Automating these governance processes will speed application delivery. ### Application development After requirements for the application or update have been outlined and agreed to development can begin. Teams that follow the [agile methodology](/en/topics/devops/what-is-agile-methodology) for development may be developing and deploying as often as once, or even several times, each day. Designing, building, testing, and deploying the application can all be considered part of the development phase. ### Software testing Once the new application has been developed it will need to be tested and bugs will need to be resolved before moving forward into production. For agile and DevOps teams, testing should occur simultaneously with development. Feedback should be passed back to the development team in a continuous manner. [Continuous integration](/en/topics/devops/what-is-ci-cd) should be part of the development process to keep these frequent updates from conflicting with each other. The goal of the testing stage is to make sure that the requirements outlined by governance have been met and that the application works as it should before being released to users. ### Operations and maintenance After the tests are completed and the necessary bugs are fixed, the application can be deployed to users. The operations and maintenance stage is what focuses ALM on the complete lifespan of an application. Ops doesn’t end once an application is deployed. Regular maintenance and updates need to be considered. Retirement of an application or service should also be considered as part of maintenance. Teams should define at what point an application will no longer be supported or a newer version will become available. ### ALM vs. SDLC ALM is sometimes confused with the software development life cycle (SDLC) because they both deal with the process of software development. The main difference is that SDLC is primarily focused on the development phase, where ALM is concerned with the entire application life cycle, from concept to maintenance and eventually decommissioning, and continues after the application is developed. SDLC can be considered part of application life cycle management, primarily during the development, testing, and deployment stages. ALM may include several development life cycles for a given application. [Learn more about security in the software development life cycle](/en/topics/security/software-development-lifecycle-security "article | Security in the software development lifecycle") What is platform engineering? ----------------------------- [Read the article](/en/topics/platform-engineering/what-is-platform-engineering "Read the article") Application lifecycle management tools -------------------------------------- ALM tools essentially function as project management tools that help you bring people and processes together. Look for a tool that includes version control, the ability for teams to communicate in real time, requirements management features, estimation and project planning, source code management, and test management. You may find all of the features you need in 1 tool, or you may need to integrate with additional tools—developer-specific tools, for example. The ALM tool you choose should also support your development process, whether it's agile, waterfall, DevOps, or something else. **Examples of ALM tools:** * Atlassian Jira * IBM ALM solutions * CA Agile Central * Microsoft Azure DevOps Server * Tuleap * Basecamp Why choose Red Hat for an application platform? ----------------------------------------------- Red Hat is a leader and active builder of application technology, and creates essential tools for [securing](/en/topics/security/container-security), simplifying, and automatically updating your infrastructure. With [Red Hat® OpenShift®](/en/technologies/cloud-computing/openshift), your developers can make new apps, host them, and deploy them in the cloud with the scalability, control, and orchestration that can turn a good idea into new business quickly and easily. If you’re looking to deploy or move your application workloads to a managed cloud service, Red Hat OpenShift is also available as a cloud-native service on [Amazon Web Services](/en/technologies/cloud-computing/openshift/aws) (AWS), [Microsoft Azure](/en/technologies/cloud-computing/openshift/azure), [Google Cloud](/en/technologies/cloud-computing/openshift/dedicated), [IBM Cloud](/en/technologies/cloud-computing/openshift/ibm), and other providers. And whether you choose a managed or self-managed environment, Red Hat provides clear pathways to [update OpenShift](/en/technologies/cloud-computing/openshift/update-openshift) to keep your clusters current and supported. Building on a foundation of Red Hat OpenShift, you can [use Red Hat Advanced Cluster Management and Red Hat Ansible® Automation Platform together](/en/technologies/cloud-computing/openshift/ansible-on-openshift) to help you efficiently deploy and manage multiple deployments across regions, including public cloud, on-premise, and edge environments. Resource Platform engineering drives DevSecOps and software security ----------------------------------------------------------- Read more about how platform engineering improves security, productivity, and DevOps standardization. [Read the report](/en/resources/platform-engineering-devsecops-analyst-material "Platform engineering drives DevSecOps and software security") Try Red Hat OpenShift --------------------- Try Red Hat OpenShift fully managed in your cloud; self-managed in the cloud, on your computer, or in your datacenter; or instantly in a developer sandbox. [Keep reading](/en/technologies/cloud-computing/openshift/try-it "Try Red Hat OpenShift") Keep reading ------------ ### What is blue green deployment? Blue green deployment is an application release model that gradually transfers user traffic from a previous version of an app or microservice to a nearly identical new release—both of which are running in production. [Read the article](/en/topics/devops/what-is-blue-green-deployment "article | what is blue green deployment") ### What is observability? Observability refers to the ability to monitor, measure, and understand a system or application by examining its outputs, logs, and performance metrics. [Read the article](/en/topics/devops/what-is-observability "article | what is observability") ### How to approach DevOps metrics DevOps metrics track the effectiveness of DevOps practices, which relate to software development and IT operations. [Read the article](/en/topics/devops/how-approach-devops-metrics "article | how to approach devops metrics") DevOps resources ---------------- ### Related content * Case study [Hutchison Telecom Hong Kong (HTHK) enhances data infrastructure for AI innovation](/en/resources/hutchison-telecom-hong-kong-snapshot) * Blog post [Confidential Containers workshop on Microsoft Azure Red Hat OpenShift: Learn interactively](/en/blog/confidential-containers-workshop-microsoft-azure-red-hat-openshift-learn-interactively) * Blog post [Meet the latest Red Hat OpenShift Superheroes](/en/blog/meet-latest-red-hat-openshift-superheroes-0) * Blog post [Precision over perception: Why architecture matters in benchmarking](/en/blog/precision-over-perception-why-architecture-matters-benchmarking) ### Related articles * [Red Hat OpenShift for developers](/en/technologies/cloud-computing/openshift/developers) * [What is blue green deployment?](/en/topics/devops/what-is-blue-green-deployment) * [What is observability?](/en/topics/devops/what-is-observability) * [How to approach DevOps metrics](/en/topics/devops/how-approach-devops-metrics) * [What is DevOps automation?](/en/topics/automation/what-is-devops-automation) * [What is CI/CD?](/en/topics/devops/what-is-ci-cd) * [What is DevOps?](/en/topics/devops/what-is-devops) * [What is GitOps?](/en/topics/devops/what-is-gitops) * [What is Istio?](/en/topics/microservices/what-is-istio) * [What is serverless?](/en/topics/cloud-native-apps/what-is-serverless) * [What is a CI/CD pipeline?](/en/topics/devops/what-cicd-pipeline) * [Stateful vs stateless applications](/en/topics/cloud-native-apps/stateful-vs-stateless) * [Platform engineering vs. DevOps](/en/topics/platform-engineering/platform-engineering-vs-devops) * [What is application migration?](/en/topics/cloud-native-apps/application-migration) * [What is application integration?](/en/topics/cloud-native-apps/application-integration) * [What is multi-cloud GitOps?](/en/topics/devops/what-is-multicloud-gitops) * [What is a GitOps workflow?](/en/topics/devops/what-is-gitops-workflow) * [What is Argo CD?](/en/topics/devops/what-is-argocd) * [Shift left vs. shift right](/en/topics/devops/shift-left-vs-shift-right) * [What is CI/CD security?](/en/topics/security/what-is-cicd-security) * [What is an internal developer platform?](/en/topics/platform-engineering/what-is-an-internal-developer-platform) * [Why choose Red Hat for a DevOps Platform?](/en/topics/devops/why-choose-red-hat-for-devops) * [What is DevSecOps?](/en/topics/devops/what-is-devsecops) * [What is an application development platform?](/en/topics/cloud-native-apps/what-app-dev-platform) * [Security in the software development lifecycle](/en/topics/security/software-development-lifecycle-security) * [What are cloud applications?](/en/topics/cloud-native-apps/what-are-cloud-applications) * [What is agile methodology?](/en/topics/devops/what-is-agile-methodology) * [Cloud-native CI/CD on Red Hat OpenShift](/en/technologies/cloud-computing/openshift/ci-cd) * [How to deploy Red Hat OpenShift](/en/technologies/cloud-computing/openshift/deploy-red-hat-openshift) * [Kubernetes-native Java development with Quarkus](/en/technologies/cloud-computing/openshift/quarkus) * [What is continuous delivery?](/en/topics/devops/what-is-continuous-delivery) * [What is deployment automation?](/en/topics/automation/what-is-deployment-automation) * [What is an SDK?](/en/topics/cloud-native-apps/what-is-SDK) * [What is SRE?](/en/topics/devops/what-is-sre) * [What is a Java runtime environment (JRE)?](/en/topics/cloud-native-apps/what-is-a-Java-runtime-environment) * [Why choose the Red Hat build of Quarkus?](/en/topics/cloud-native-apps/why-choose-red-hat-quarkus) * [What is an application architecture?](/en/topics/cloud-native-apps/what-is-an-application-architecture) * [What is Quarkus?](/en/topics/cloud-native-apps/what-is-quarkus) * [What are Java frameworks?](/en/topics/cloud-native-apps/what-is-a-Java-framework) * [What is an IDE?](/en/topics/platform-engineering/what-is-ide) [More about this topic](/en/topics/devops "More about this topic")