Melinda-Carol Ballou serves as Research Director for IDC's Application Life-Cycle Management (ALM) program. In this role, Ms. Ballou provides thought leadership, expert opinion and analysis through comprehensive research on end-to-end application life-cycle management  – from requirements to quality, testing, change, continuous release, process, project and portfolio management (PPM) with a focus on agile DevOps software life-cycle strategies.

ALM is a lynchpin across IDC's development research and is a basis for software success across emerging platforms including mobile, cloud, social and embedded software within products or "things" as part of IoT. Business leaders leverage metrics and portfolio prioritization and management capabilities to collaborate with IT by leveraging ALM and PPM.

Ms. Ballou offers competitive intelligence and consulting on key aspects of the ALM market to G2000 end-user companies, software and service providers, and investment firms. She works collaboratively with other teams at IDC to create IDC's application development research, DevOps and project and portfolio research (PPM) in the context of ALM, and business/IT governance as related to agile transformation. In addition, she provides special support through a range of custom consulting projects and multi-client research programs.

With over 28 years of experience, Ms. Ballou has researched PPM and ALM for much of her career. Before joining IDC, she founded and worked independently for Ballou IT Strategies, and before that at META Group for 11 years, researching PPM and ALM in both positions. Prior to that, Ms. Ballou held senior editorial positions at ComputerWorld and Digital Review.

Ms. Ballou holds a Master’s Degree in Professional Writing from MIU, and a BA from Williams College in Philosophy and Music.

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