Introduction
The Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC) is a common process of designing, developing, and producing high-quality software. It provides a well-structured set of phases that help developers to produce quality software ready for production use while simultaneously minimizing cost and shortening production time. This benefits companies a lot in order to meet or even exceed their customer needs. The life cycle can be thought of as a circular process in which the end of the useful life of one system leads to the beginning of another project that will either develop a new version of the system or replace an existing system altogether.
Importance
- It aids a lot in project planning, scheduling and estimating.
- It makes project control easier.
- It improves client relations.
- It decreases chances of errors or risks in a project.
- It decreases project management cost.
- It makes team development easier.
- With its stage-entry criteria to further move onto next steps, it ensures all the criterias have been fulfilled which benefits all the members.
Phases in SDLC
The phases of SDLC can be broadly categorized into seven phases.
1. Planning and requirement analysis
This is the most important stage in SDLC. It is performed by the senior members of the team with the feedback of all the stakeholders and domain experts. It includes planning of the material costs, creating the project teams and mentors and getting feedback from potential customers, field experts and the sales representatives.
This phase should clearly define the purpose and perform requirement analysis of the software being developed. The team members are meant to develop a clear roadmap to effectively develop the software. Boundaries are also set up for the project to limit its scope and expansion.
Example
Once the requirement analysis is done, the next phase is to get the documentation of the software requirements accepted from the project stakeholders. The document should include all the software requirements to be constructed during the product life cycle. For example, the search feature may be a requirement for a phone contacts management system.
3. Design and Prototyping
Another important phase of SDLC is design. All the aspects of the system, from input and output screens to reports, databases and computer processes must be designed by the analyst in this phase. After designing, the analyst must provide the physical specifics of the designed system - either as a model or as detailed documentation as a reference guide to those who will build/develop the new system. Prototyping is also a key part of this phase.
A prototype can be considered as one of the early versions of the software in the iterative software development model. A basic idea of how the application looks and works is demonstrated by the prototype. The design and prototype can be then shown to the stakeholders to get feedback to improve the application before actually writing the code or developing the software - which can be costly.
4. Software Development
This is the stage in which the developers actually write code and build the software. It is built according to the document specifications developed in the earlier stages. Developers choose the right programming language and use tools like text editors, compilers, debuggers, interpreters and any one of the collaboration platforms to accomplish the effective development of the application. A large project might be handed over to smaller teams for development but everything basically takes place according to the planning done in earlier phases.
5. Testing
When the development process is complete, it is necessary to test the application to ensure that it solves the needs addressed and decided during the requirements defining stage. Testing might include unit testing, integrated testing, system, testing, etc. However, it is a really good practice to implement automated testing so that all tests are run regularly and reliably.
6. Deployment
Once the software is stated to be free from bugs or errors and is in a perfectly working state, it is officially released or deployed to the market and made available to the end users. Deployment may be simple or complex depending upon the size of the product. Some companies also automate the deployment process.
7. Maintenance
The SDLC doesn’t end after the software reaches the market. There is still the need for proper and regular maintenance. Developers are responsible to keep the software up to date with the newer trends and language updates. They are also responsible to keep resolving residual bugs that were not able to be handled before the launch and further issues that the product might encounter.
