The idea to write this post was triggered when I read an article called “Choosing Agile-true application lifecycle management (ALM)” and in particular by it saying that many ALM tools come as a package that covers multiple processes in the lifecycle of an application. Although strictly speaking this is not a “we-cover-everything” approach, it still strongly reminds me of the take that ERP software has made initially. Its promise, put simply, was that an entire organization with all its activities (to avoid the term process here) could be represented without the need to develop custom software. This was a huge step forward and some companies made and still make a lot of money with it.
Of course, the reality is a bit more complex and so organizations that embrace ERP software have to choose between two options: either change the software to fit the organization, or change the organization to fit the software. This is not meant to be ERP bashing, it simply underlines the point that the one-size-fits-all approach has limits. And a direct consequence of this is that although the implementation effort can be reduced considerably, there is still a lot of work to be done. This is usually referred to as customizing. The more effort needs to go there, the more the ERP software is changing into something individual. So the distinction between a COTS (commercial off-the-shelf) software, the ERP, and something developed individually gets blurred. This can reduce the advantages of ERP, and especially the cost advantage, to an extent.
And another aspect is crucial here, too. An ERP system, pretty much by definition, is a commodity in the sense that the activity it supports is nothing that gives the organization a competitive advantage. In today’s times some of the key influencing factors for the latter are time-to-market and, related to that, agility and flexibility. ERP systems usually have multiple, tightly integrated components and a complex data model to support all this. So every change needs careful analysis so that it doesn’t break something else. No agility, no flexibility, no short time-to-market. And in addition all organizations I have come across so far, need things that their ERP does not provide. So there is always a strong requirement to integrate the ERP world with the rest, be it other systems (incl .mainframe) or trading partners. Middleware vendors have addressed this need for many years.
And now I am finally coming back to my initial point. In my view ALM tools do usually cover one or several aspects of the whole thing but never everything. And if they do, nobody these days starts on a green field. So also here we need to embrace reality and accept that something like ALM middleware is required.