Aerospace and Defence are a highly critical industry driven by compliance and software with exceptional performance and safety goals. However, the constantly growing complexity in product designs driven by software-intensive functionality and other challenges requires the defence and aerospace industry to implement solutions that can understand the various processes and help them stay connected.
What are the challenges faced by the development teams in Aerospace and Defence?
1. Security & Governance: Security and adherence to stringent regulation is of utmost importance in aerospace and defence software development. However, teams are often seen juggling between time-consuming security testing, outdated or siloed tools, and lack of desired skills to combat security issues. Adding to the woes is the challenge of addressing export control regulations on data, multi-nationality and regulations etc. Implementing the right tools can help them secure coding practices and develop software that surpasses such security risks.
2. Quality: There are several risks involved in a low-quality software/application. Products with functional defects cannot be implemented in the aerospace and defence industry. This puts immense pressure on the development teams to deliver high-quality applications in a shorter development cycle. Ensuring the implementation of best lifecycle management solutions for developing defence and aerospace products without compromising on the quality needs to be emphasized in the early stages of application development.
3. Team productivity: A robust communication strategy and collaboration across teams is paramount when the teams have to develop critical software especially in the defence and aerospace industry. However, functional silos, communication gaps, managing requirements are major challenges affecting teams’ productivity.
Application Lifecycle Management (ALM): An enabler of effective communication and a single source of truth
Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) defines the entire process of an application lifecycle from the conception phase to implementation and retirement of the product. Implementing ALM into the business creates a collaborative environment where products can be efficiently developed.
Benefits of implementing Application Lifecycle Management in Aerospace & Defence Industry
Aerospace and defence players who have embraced Engineering & Application Lifecycle Management have already witnessed an acceleration in the development time and saving costs. However, several other benefits come with Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) into the system. Let’s discuss them in detail below.
1. Connect teams to a single source of truth
Working in the defence and aerospace industry involves multiple teams who require real-time collaboration across various divisions be it design, manufacture and service. Teams can easily communicate and make effective use of data with an ALM solution that ensures that the users and artefacts stay connected and updated, it also facilitates the easy retrieval of reports and metrics for project tracking, reviews and audits.
2. Efficient monitoring of the product quality and adherence to industry standards
An ALM solution combines data on development, testing, and defects while providing real-time visualization of application quality. ALM facilitates frameworks for various industry-specific standards, processes, and methodologies. Ensures managing projects or products are in adherence to the recommended industry standards and follow all the safety norms and best practices. ALM solutions also support manual and automation-based testing across platforms and domains and provide an inline defect tracking mechanism to capture, track, control, and fix defects.
3. Managing risks and improving Governance
Implementing Application Lifecycle management solutions support effective risk management for defence and aerospace projects and programs to identify, capture, analyse, mitigate, track and control risk and hazards.
4. Effective requirement and change management
Changes in requirements for any aerospace or defence sector are frequent and continuous which end up in the dilemma of whether the final output meets the approved requirement. Managing change requests also leads to rework throughout a product lifecycle. ALM tracks and effectively manage change requests from various sources. ALM ensures all the reviews, analyses and changes are in place and approved before implementation.
5.Increases team productivity and faster time to release
An ALM tool brings in several opportunities to increase the productivity of all stakeholders and teams involved in several ways.
- Integrating the various components of the Application lifecycle enable teams to follow the best practices and proven methodologies that increase the efficiency
- It saves a lot of time and effort as automation eliminates the repetitive task with reuse
- Better collaboration among teams by eliminating human error and delivery delays
Parting thoughts
Aerospace and Defence OEMs constantly evolve with innovative solutions under all the security and compliance protocols. There is always a constant need to continuously innovate, design and create. Application lifecycle management allows them to do so with its interactive components. Implementing ALM solutions enables all the players in the supply chain to digitally engage with the product as if it were a tangible thing.
How does MicroGenesis help the defence and aerospace industry?
Our partnership with leading ALM vendors enables us to deliver relevant ALM solutions to clients and help them scale up in the market. Several leading aerospace and defence OEMs and suppliers depend on our scalable and reliable ALM solutions, technical consulting and expertise. By siphoning our years of experience in configuring and customizing ALM solutions, our aerospace and defence clients have created value and delivered world-class products to stay ahead of the competition.
To get more details contact us: https://mgtechsoft.com/contactus/
