Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) is the engine behind agile, efficient and stable software delivery. It provides the structure and tools needed to take an idea from concept to production, something that’s especially valuable in Power Platform development.

In the latest of TrueNorth’s ‘Ask the Expert’ videos, Steve Drake, Director of Technology, shared how his team has adapted ALM to work within Power Platform’s unique low-code environment – and why good ALM is so important for both development teams and business users.

What is ALM – and why does it matter?

At its core, ALM is about managing the full journey of an application, from initial idea through to live deployment. It involves defining requirements, building functionality, testing and then deploying into different environments with minimal disruption.

Steve emphasised that, while the process is technical, the focus is always on business value: “At the end of the day, business users want to see features delivered by the software development team.”

Good ALM, he explained, means that at the end of every sprint, “you’ve got something demonstrable, you’ve got something that’s deployable into test, into user acceptance testing, into production if production’s ready.” That repeatability creates reliability, enabling businesses to deliver improvements more often, with less friction.

Why Power Platform requires a different approach

In traditional development environments, ALM is straightforward: “You’ve got code, you develop code, you compile code, you’ve got source control against that code… it can very easily move through the journey.”

Power Platform, however, is different. “You’re not really editing code,” Steve explained. “You’re making changes to forms, you’re making changes to database schemas underneath, there’s no real code.” Because of this, TrueNorth has had to adapt the ALM process. “You have to continuously export the metadata from Power Platform, push that into your source control repository, then run your ALM against the exported version.” This allows the team to peer review changes, track updates and apply ALM rigour even in a no-code environment.

A real-world release cycle

ALM enables TrueNorth to release features rapidly, while maintaining control and quality. Steve walked through a typical release cycle that TrueNorth runs with its clients. A salesperson using a live application might request a small change, such as adding a field to a form or adjusting a calculation. The request is translated into a user story, with clear acceptance criteria. It’s then picked up by the development team in a sprint and demonstrated to the client within two weeks. From there, the changes move into testing and then production, often in as little as four to five weeks from the original request.

Handling breaks, bugs and hotfixes

Even with the best processes, things can go wrong. Steve is candid about that: “We do break things. It’s the nature of software.”

To address urgent bugs or business-critical issues, TrueNorth uses a streamlined hotfix process. “For a really important issue, we can turn around a hotfix in half a day – and we’ve done that before,” Steve said. Typically, the turnaround is closer to three days, but the goal is always the same: create a focused fix, document it clearly and deliver it through a fast-tracked ALM pipeline.

Crucially, hotfixes are temporary by design. Steve explained, “We then produce a more strategic fix as part of the main solution, and when that’s released, it automatically removes the hotfix. So you don’t end up with a system plagued with dozens of fixes that never get cleaned up.”

Hotfixes are carefully tracked: “The hotfixes are numbered against the bug that they address, hen we’ll have hotfix one, two, three, four.” And when a strategic fix is delivered in a main release, “it automatically removes the hotfix. So you don’t end up with a system which is plagued with hundreds of hotfixes that just never get removed.”

Handling long-term features without delaying everything

Not all features can be finished in a two-week sprint. Steve explained that, because Power Platform doesn’t support traditional feature toggles, “we create security roles that protect the features from the user.” That means unfinished features can be deployed safely without being visible: “If you don’t have the integration X feature security role, then you don’t see that feature.” This also lets the team give access to pilot users: “We might say, this isn’t complete yet, but you can start testing it in UAT.”

Environment management and customer control

Managing dev, test, and production environments can be complex, but TrueNorth has built a robust, automated process. “We have a release pipeline in Azure DevOps that releases things through to test and production,” Steve explained. Releases go first into a “throwaway” stage environment. Once the team are happy that a release works, it’s released for testing.

At any moment, “we can look and see what versions are in what environment at any point in time.” Releases are visible, repeatable and traceable.

Interestingly, in some cases, Steve’s team doesn’t even manage production releases any more: “We don’t touch user acceptance testing or production for some of our customers. It’s all done by the customer. These customers have their internal IT team that manage the releases.” Giving control back to the customer is enabled by well-structured and automated ALM.

Tracking Power Platform changes and peer reviewing

Steve explained how even no-code changes, like editing a form, are reviewed with the same discipline as code. “We export as XML, we compare it against the previous version, and then we can then link it to a user story.” This review ensures that developers have only modified what was required: “We make sure that the developer hasn’t included assets that are not needed in that release, that they’ve not upset any other area of the system.”

This discipline pays off: “If we didn’t have these proper checks, then we can’t trust the release is going to work.”

Coordinating Azure assets alongside Power Platform

Many enterprise solutions involve more than just Power Apps. TrueNorth often integrates Azure components into their releases. The team uses Terraform to manage functions and Azure DevOps to handle deployment of functions, APIs and other services.

Everything is versioned and deployed together: “When we package a release, we know what all the dependencies are, and it’s just all done together at the same time through the same pipelines.”

The impact of ALM: From stalled to agile

One of Steve’s standout stories involved a client who couldn’t release anything for two years. “They got stuck on releasing… and now they’re releasing every two weeks.”

The change wasn’t magic – it was a result of solid ALM. “They can really see value in the investment they’re making, because they released every two weeks rather than just be stuck because of a technical challenge. We’re quite proud of that as a team.”

Advice for getting started with ALM in Power Platform

Steve acknowledged that TrueNorth’s ALM setup is quite mature, but that’s not where you have to begin. Steve’s advice is clear: start small and build on a strong foundation.

“To be fair, our ALM process is quite complicated for some of our projects because it has to meet quite complicated needs, but we do have some simple versions as well,” he said. “If you’re just starting now, you can connect Power Platform environments to a GitHub repository… I would start with that.”

His key advice: “Make sure you’ve got good DevOps, make sure you’ve got good user stories, you’ve got good tasks, you complete things.” With that foundation in place, “everything builds on top of your good DevOps.”

Ready to improve your ALM process?

Whether you’re new to Power Platform or already scaling enterprise solutions, a structured ALM approach is essential for releasing with speed, confidence and stability.

Want to talk to the team behind this approach? Reach out to Steve Drake and the TrueNorth IT team.