Asad Rizvi | 10/25/2024In the dynamic landscape of app development, ensuring seamless transitions from conception to deployment is paramount. Enter Application Lifecycle Management (ALM), a strategic framework that orchestrates the entire journey—from design and development to testing and production. For government agencies navigating the complexities of Power Platform projects, Analytica stands ready to provide expert guidance and implementation support. Whether you’re safeguarding sensitive data, optimizing costs, or on a journey to scale a particular project, ALM serves as the compass that guides mission-critical initiatives.
Many clients are unaware that ALM is available for Power Platform projects, nor do they know how to qualify their projects to determine if they can benefit from the use of ALM. This blog post will help bridge the knowledge gap by explaining what ALM is and the right time to implement it based on specific project needs. By demystifying ALM, we hope to empower teams to make informed decisions to enhance the development processes and ensure success.
What is Application Lifecycle Management?
ALM pipelines are tools available in Microsoft Power Platform and Azure that help development teams automate the process of building, testing, and deploying applications. ALM provides development teams with automation, continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD) capabilities to streamline effort and domain knowledge required for environment makers, admins, and developers.
Admins can easily set up new pipelines, manage, govern, and facilitate solution development, testing, and delivery across the organization. The pipelines produced through the Power Platform Admin Center and/or Azure portal are secured solutions provided by Microsoft, and often preconfigured, so that admins can instantiate a pipeline with minimal effort. Advanced level developers may extend pipelines and customize them to their organization needs.
What are the benefits of using ALM?
Establishing ALM pipelines benefits development teams and admins to centrally govern citizen-led and pro-dev-led projects at scale with minimal effort. Admins are given the ability to set up safeguards that standardize the development, testing, and delivery across the organization.
Additional ALM benefits include:
- Improved collaboration: ALM processes foster better collaboration between different stakeholders such as business analysts, developers, testers, and IT operation teams. Development teams can build, test, and launch applications or workflows and share resources with colleagues in an environment dedicated to a particular organization, center, or project. ALM allows parallel development without disrupting each other’s work.
- Increased efficiency: ALM streamlines the development process and reduces the time and effort creating and deploying applications by automating repetitive tasks. ALM automates tasks such as testing and deployment and provides set of best practices and guidelines for developers. This results in higher quality and well-tested development efforts through a safe and governed process.
- Standardized approach: ALM tools provide a standardized approach for communication and collaboration between software development teams and project stakeholders. Microsoft Power Platform development projects are compatible with Azure ALM pipelines by default and can easily integrate into new or existing pipelines. The ALM system utilized by Admins handles the heavy lifting and reduces the burden of ongoing maintenance tasks.
What are the different types of environments available in Microsoft Power Platform?
There are many types of environments in Microsoft Power Platform available for use. It’s important to understand the differences between the environments before implementing ALM for solutions in Power Platform. The table below describes the different types of environments:
| Type | Description | Security |
| Production |
|
Full control. |
| Default |
|
Limited control. All licensed users have the environment maker role. |
| Sandbox |
|
Full control. If used for testing, only user access is needed. Developers require environment maker access to create resources. |
| Trial |
|
Full control. |
| Developer |
|
Limited control. Security groups can’t be assigned to developer environments. |
| Microsoft Dataverse for Teams |
|
Limited control.
Admins have limited settings available for Teams environments. No customizations of security role or assignments are available. Teams members are automatically mapped to their Teams membership type – owners, members, and guests – with a corresponding security role assigned by the system. |
Source: Power Platform environments overview – Power Platform | Microsoft Learn
A project can benefit from having distinct environments for different needs. An isolated development environment allows experimentation and testing without affecting production data while a production environment can remain stable with controlled access. Careful consideration of the usage requirements are needed to ensure cost efficiency.
What parameters to consider when implementing ALM?
When considering implementing ALM, project the number of users who will need to interact with the environment. Projects with a substantial user base should lean towards creating separate environments for enhanced performance and scalability. A shared default environment is often ideal for non-critical projects with a small, internal user base. As projects become more complex with more integrations (PowerApps, Power Automate, PowerBI) teams should consider implementing ALM.
Data sensitivity level can be the determining factor in the decision to using ALM. Data that is confidential or regulated often requires stricter security controls. Creating separate environments, as part of an ALM strategy, helps ensure better protection for your data with controlled access and security. This mitigates the impact of changes to production data, by testing in a sandbox environment before carrying out controlled deployments to production.
Effective ALM is crucial for minimizing costs that can arise from system downtime and productivity losses. In a single environment, downtime can lead to revenue loss and productivity setbacks. These costs can be prevented by establishing distinct environments for testing, development, and production. Some organizations cannot risk the reputational impact downtime can cause, therefore those organizations need proper ALM planning to mitigate any potential impacts.
The table below reflects Microsoft’s criteria for evaluating parameters when determining if ALM is feasible for your project:
| Parameters | Defining criteria | Environment |
| Number of users | 1–10 users | Default |
| 7–30 users | Shared | |
| >30 users | Dedicated | |
| Nature of data | Highly confidential | Dedicated |
| Confidential | Shared | |
| Not confidential | Default | |
| Monetary or reputational impact to business | Yes | Shared or Dedicated |
| No | Default | |
| Requires ALM | Yes | Shared or Dedicated |
| No | Default |
Manage the default environment – Power Platform | Microsoft Learn
Navigating ALM for Government Excellence
Through our explorations of ALM within the Power Platform, we recognize ALM’s pivotal role in current and future government IT initiatives. ALM is not a mere process; it is the bedrock of reliability, security, and efficiency. Whether you are an IT manager steering complex dev-pro-led projects, or a citizen developer looking for guidance on taking your project to the next level, ALM is the key to ensuring seamless transitions, safeguarding sensitive data, and optimizing costs.
In your pursuit of excellence, remember — ALM can adapt to your agency’s unique needs. Stay vigilant, collaborate with experts and champions within the agency, and leverage ALM to empower your organization’s digital transformation. Together, we build toward success—one well-managed app at a time.
Thank you for joining us on this insightful journey. May your ALM strategies be robust, your deployments seamless, and your mission fulfilled!
About Analytica:
As one of a select group of companies capable of bridging the gap between functional silos, Analytica specializes in providing a holistic approach to an organization’s financial, analytics, and information technology needs. We are an SBA-certified 8(a) small business that supports public-sector civilian, national security, and health missions. We are committed to ensuring quality and consistency in the services and technologies we deliver. We demonstrate this commitment through our appraisal at the Software Engineering Institute’s CMMI® V2.0 Maturity Level 3, ISO 9001:2015, ISO/IEC 20000-1:2018, ISO/IEC 27001:2013, and ITIL certification.
We have been honored as one of the 250 fastest-growing businesses in the U.S. for three consecutive years by Inc. Our ability to succeed and grow is credited to our people and the great work they do. We are an organization that embraces different ideas, perspectives, and people. Every one of us at Analytica offers a unique background and different characteristics that adds to our quality of work and help us better serve our clients. Interested in joining a team that enjoys working together and truly loves what they do? Visit our Careers page to check out employee testimonies, the benefits we offer, and our open positions!
