What is IBM ELM/ALM?

What is IBM ELM/ALM?

IBM® Engineering Lifecycle Management (ELM) integrates ELM products to provide a complete set of applications for software or systems development. ELM includes IBM Engineering Requirements Management DOORS® Next (DOORS Next), IBM Engineering Requirements Management DOORS (DOORS), IBM Engineering Workflow Management (EWM), and IBM Engineering Test Management (ETM), IBM Engineering Systems Design Rhapsody® – Model Manager (RMM), and IBM Engineering Lifecycle Optimization – Engineering Insights (ENI) with Jazz™ Team Server. This solution is designed for requirements analysts, developers, systems engineers, and testers. 

The following diagram shows the development lifecycle that the solutions support. To see overviews of the applications that are represented in the image, click the boxes. For example, clickValidate and verify to see an overview of ETM.

To support the development lifecycle, ELM products let you link artifacts across applications, as shown in the following figure and examples: Figure 1. ELM connects analysts, developers, and testers

Requirements:

• Requirements are implemented by iteration plans and validated by test plans.
• Requirements are elicited, documented, elaborated, and validated by analysts. Their implementation progress is tracked in work items, and their correctness is validated by test cases.

Implementation:

• Project managers and development managers use iteration plans to implement requirements in the context of a development schedule.
• Team leads plan the iterations using iteration plans, where the work is divided further into tasks.
• Developers work on defects that are submitted by testers as a result of test execution.

Testing:

• The test team links requirements to test plans and test cases. 
• Testers link test cases to work items to ensure coverage of the implementation.
• Testers run test cases and submit defects for test failures.

ELM integrates the work of analysts, developers, and testers by providing the following cross-application features:

• Link between artifacts across applications: For example, you can link test cases to work items and requirements.
• Hover over a link to see details about the link target: For example, testers can monitor the status of a defect that they reported to the development team.
• Track status across projects by adding widgets from different applications to a dashboard: For example, you can add a widget that shows the defects that are blocking testers.

Jazz Team Server

The Jazz Team Server provides the foundational services, such as user management and license management, that enable the ELM applications to work together as a single logical server. In this way, the Jazz Team Server serves as an integration hub for the applications. After you install the ELMproducts, you install product license keys into the Jazz Team Server to permit access to the capabilities provided by the applications. For details about the topologies supported for new or upgraded installations, see Planning the deployment and installation.

Products and applications

For a detailed overview of the products and applications in ELM, see the following topics:

• Overview of DOORS Next
• IBM Engineering Requirements Management DOORS – Web Access
• Overview of EWM
• Overview of ETM
• Overview of Global Configuration Management
• Overview of Reporting
• Overview of ENI
• Overview of RMM

Part of the Jazz community 

ELM products are developed transparently on the open and extensible Jazz platform. On Jazz.net, you can download the products and their milestones, track development schedules, join discussion forums, open enhancement requests, and interact with the product developers. To learn more about the products, see the developer-written articles in the Jazz.net library or the topics about complex deployment scenarios on the Deployment wiki.

More information

To learn more about ELM, see these resources: 

• ELM on Jazz.net: Learn about the new features, read the release notes, and download the binaries to install the solution.
• ELM videos: These videos highlight the configuration management capabilities of the solution. 
• ELM sandbox: You can try a series of exercises in an online sandbox to learn more about a broad range of capabilities across the application development lifecycle.
• ELM on Jazz.net: Learn about the new features, read the release notes, and download the binaries to install the solution.
• ELM demo series: This set of recorded demonstrations offers a full lifecycle walk-through, and videos that highlight specific industry needs, in-depth tools, and practice topics.