ALM function Microsoft products Comments
Architecture
Requirements Word No special integration or support into other lifecycle tools.
Modeling Visio Close integration with both development tools and server infrastructure for round-trip design, implementation, and reverse engineering. Requires the Visio version available only with VS.NET's Enterprise editions.
Frameworks VS.NET Enterprise Templates Create project templates that include various resources and let you enforce various policies about projects built using the templates.
Development
Development environment VS.NET The Enterprise editions provide the language, collaboration, and other lifecycle tools for distributed applications.
Testing
Functional, performance, and load testing Application Center Test ACT is more of a development debugging and testing tool for Web apps. It's not really a general-purpose test tool. Use it to help ferret out problems with performance bottlenecks and to put a server under load.
Distributed application performance Visual Studio Analyzer Lets you examine and debug distributed applications. As it runs, Visual Studio Analyzer records data about its performance and execution.
Unit tests and debugging VS.NET Extensive debugging support both in the development environment and the .NET Framework.
Deployment
Deployment infrastructure Windows Installer 2.0 Database and supporting tools for installing any application and making system modifications. It also makes an application self-healing.
Setup packages Setup and deployment packages Project types within Visual Studio .NET that create setup packages for various types of applications, creating setup executables, MSI files, compressed CAB files, and so on.
Server infrastructure All Microsoft Server products Server versions of Windows, SQL Server 2000, IIS and ASP.NET, Exchange, Commerce Server, BizTalk, and all the others that provide services to distributed applications.
Maintenance
Microsoft has no specialized maintenance tools beyond those used for other lifecycle stages.
Management
Process and reporting Microsoft Project A comprehensive tool for managing software development projects.
Version control Visual SourceSafe VSS is probably the least competitive of any of Microsoft's ALM products, having gone for years without any kind of major upgrade.

Table 1 Match Microsoft's ALM Matrix to Your Needs. Microsoft is gradually filling out its product offerings for managing the full application lifecycle while providing plenty of hooks for third parties to integrate their own offerings. Here is the current state of Microsoft products, showing how they relate to different parts of the lifecycle. You could use other products, such as Microsoft Office, to perform some of the functions, though you'd have to do a lot of work to customize your lifecycle documents.