SILKROAD

Business and technical decision makers generally face a number of common issues with their IT and software initiatives. Figure below highlights these issues. These issues stress importance of ALM solution in software development process.

Lack of visibility into project status
- This is primary project management issue that can also include the inability to enforce responsibility, accountability, sign-offs and checkpoints.
  The inabilities to enforce stakeholder involvement, to perform accurate estimation, and to adjust project schedules accordingly are also symptomatic of project management issues.
Ineffective team communication
- Communication is becoming increasingly complex, and the production of goods and services is spread around the world. If software development relocates to a country such as India or China, IT needs to handle it somehow. Coordinating projects across functional, geographic and organizational boundaries present particularly challenging communication issues.
Balancing business demands with project risks
- Poorly defined and changing requirements, scope creep, unreliable estimates, unclear business objectives and complex and rapidly evolving technology compound this issue and increase risk.
Unpredictable delivery times and quality
- Balancing quality of service requirements, functional requirements, budget and schedule is a tough challenge. Eleventh-hour bugs found during testing and in production are all too frequent occurrences.

There are many different areas and factors that can contribute to these core issues, and discovering and addressing the underlying issues are not trivial. Additional demands include having to balance new project requirements with the financial burden of maintaining existing applications and the need to meet ever more stringent compliance requirements.