How the Software Development lifecycle works
Submitted by Andy_B on Friday, 26 March 2021 Page Views: 294
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Any software development company will use this process to maximize efficiency, reduce cost, assure fast delivery and meet the needs of clients. Software Development Life Cycle and is also referred to as the Application Development life-cycle.
A typical SDLC consists of the following phases:
Planning and analysis of requirements
In the first step of the development process, the leader of the team evaluates the terms of the project, does a survey, and forms a structure. Planning is done to define the purpose and scope of the product. It also defines the feasibility and implementation of the project. In the analysis of requirements, product requirements are gathered which include all essential features and specifications based on the demand of the client. It defines all the resources and performs precise analysis of the life cycle.Designing and prototyping of the product
In this phase, the design of the software is made which assures the best architecture of the product being developed. It is a very crucial stage because any failure at this stage will result in overall project collapse. This stage works on aspects like architecture, user interface, platform, communication, programming, security, etc. Two kinds of designs, i.e high level and low level, are developed during this phase. Prototype defines early software version. It gives an early demonstration of the software: how will it look like and what would be the working. Any changes at this stage can prevent rewriting of code if it fails afterwards.Development of the product
This step means creating the desired product. A programming language is chosen and the code is written. Developers write code as per the instructions of the organization and the tools used for programming. The choice of programming language depends on the software to be developed. In this coding phase, tasks are divided and assigned to different developers. This phase makes sure that the goals that were set before programming are being met. Any errors or glitches are fixed and the application is run to view the results. This makes it the longest phase of the software development lifecycle.Testing of the product
After the completion of the software, testing is critical before making it available to the users. At this stage, defects are observed, fixed, and then re-tested. Retesting is continuously done until the final product meets the need and requirements of the client.Deployment
Once assured that the software is stable and bug-free, it is made available to the users. This deployment phase is sometimes automated by companies.Operation and maintenance of the product
This is the final stage of the development cycle where the application is deployed and is being used by the customers. However, maintenance is still important to avoid any bugs and fixes observed by users, for updating to newer versions and addition of new features to the software.With many thanks to Rupert T and Andy C for their kind help and support of this article, including their lovely images.
