Greg,

My Coder to Developer session last year at Soutwest Fox presented low or no cost solutions for developers that will help them manage different parts of this process...defect tracking, testing, build management, etc. IMO, the low cost of the tools I discuss make them attractive to typical Fox developers. Your LifeCycle product is one tool that I discuss.

I'll be doing the same session on March 2 at the Dallas/Fort Worth Fox User Group.

>Perhaps I miss stated the title of the operation. The terms seem to change on annual bases. I think MS is calling theirs "Visual Studio Team System". But in effect, it is series of modules that track, monitor, and manage the development of solution from conception, design, development, test, deployment, and issue tracking. Around me, I mostly hear management discussing the benefits of the tools, but hear vary little from the developers and other non-management personnel.
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>>OK, let me try that again...
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>>I have no clue what "Application Lifecycle Management" is. I could make a guess, as I inferred below, but it sounds a whole lot like some marketing invention to me.
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>>Interpreting "ALM" literally, it sounds like a 'system' to "manage" the entire life CYCLE of an application, form conception to feasibility all the way to replacing it with another system. The keyword seems to be "manage". And since the development tools are being tossed overboard, it looks like the product (if it is one) is tool agnostic.
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>>Now how the hell can anyone make good money managing the entire life of an application??... not too many ways, in my book.
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>I hope I am wrong, but doubt I am. But it has been my experience (mainly in the past few years) that developer will not reach into their pockets and fork out a few dollars for a tool that would save them far more time and money. If it is not free, then they are generally not interested. (By the way, I do not mean to insult anyone, just an opinion, you know.)
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>>So I says to myself "self, what problem are they trying to solve here?" and I answer to myself "managing development effective across a few oceans might be the key part of the whole thing".
>>In which case, Bangalore made sense to me.
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>Ok, I get it now.