| | August 20169CIOReviewBeing the first to market gives the organization a substantial competitive advantage. Those that initially follow this strategy also gain some benefit from it, but by the time it's best practice, you've lost your edge. That is when innovation becomes arequirement and there are many instances of this in almost every vertical. In hospitality, those hotels to first provide a mobile check in are looked at as industry leaders and are driving the customer experience that separates them from other chains. The next hotels to deploy a mobile experience that gave customers that ability also gained some of that the advantage, but now almost every chain has to have some mobile experience. Eventually successful ALM strategy becomes part of the IT infrastructure. What makes up any organization's IT infrastructure was all once an innovation that presented competitive advantage. IT innovation eventually becomes IT infrastructure requirements that need support. The IT organization supports the innovations that provide competitive advantages to the business. In most cases that strategy requires the development of custom applications. Off-the-shelf software may allow most businesses to check the box, but differentiation from the completion is highly unlikely. The development and delivery of these applications are ingrained in ALM. The advantage relies heavily on your ability to rapidly design and deliver custom applications that are then transitioned to best practices, so they are supported applications over the entire life cycle. Executing this well is intrinsic to the success of any ALM strategy. A business' ALM prowess thus has a direct effect on its capability to produce a real competitive advantage.A sound ALM strategy is aligned with the goals of the business and is inherent to the overall business strategy. With all the opportunities out there to differentiate the business from the competition, a great IT leader relies on IT investments to support that innovation. Most often those investments are the array of custom applications that create a unique customer experience; these applications that are fashioned and succeeded through application lifecycle management. The IT organizations ability to support business strategies requires the alignment of stakeholders across the business. Many IT leaders place too much concern over operational risks, while losing focus on the true strategic risks that go beyond the ability to just keep the lights on. The reality is that the inability to support to support the business strategy has a much greater impact than an outage or similar systems failure. By losing out on the venture to differentiate the business due to the IT organization's inability to meet market demands or customer's expectations won't benefit your aspirations nor the brand's ability to succeed in the new economy of disruption. Equally as important is the ability to answer the bell when a competitor is first to achieve differentiation, learning and adapting to the disruption will ensure the viability of the business. Consistency is the name of the game when developing new applications, whose success is determined by efficient ALM. Implementing and championing ALM as the institution for business strategy is a requirement for any successful IT leader. As we build confidence and community across our businesses, it's fundamental to establish the ALM strategy that will bring your organization the competitive advantages to delivery success both internally and externally to all your customers. It's fundamental to establish the ALM strategy that will bring your organization the competitive advantages to delivery success both internally and externally to all your customersAaron Gette
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