I will say that just about every advocate of a tool, tool suite, development methodology, you-name-your-silver-bullet, eventually say something similar to “give your soul over to this and you’ll reap ….” Again, in 30+ years I’ve never seen reality meet the vision (I lived through ICASE in the 90s for example).

However, I’d love to see more examples from ALMs that provide:
1. Defect arrival curves and projections to answer the question “when will we be done?”
2. Project data (milestone completion curves, requirements curves, defect curves, etc.) that answers the question “what schedule should we allocate for this project?”

I’m not saying that systems don’t try to answer these questions, only that they often – too often – come up short in practical use (then I get a call).

Bruce

Of course, only 1% do it strategically and correctly, thus the common perception that you point out, that ALM is still not fully baked…

Good point, though I tried to allude to something similar with “enterprise project management systems.”

This deserves a whole article by itself, but in a nutshell, like any tool set, an ALM must deliver on its vision and promise. “What ALM suites already do …” might be better said as “already trying in part to do.”

Good comment. Thanks.

Business Intelligence is insight into how your business is operating. Development of new products is a business activity. Why not use BI techniques in your project management? You will do better than using traditional project management alone….