Software development is not a quick and simple business function. There is a specific methodology with clearly defined processes that should be followed to ensure high quality software is implemented.
SDLC or the Software Development Life Cycle is a process that produces software with the highest quality and lowest cost in the shortest time possible. SDLC provides a well-structured flow of phases that helps businesses quickly produce high-quality software which is well-tested and ready for production use.
The process works by lowering the cost of software development while simultaneously improving quality and shortening production time, all while defining the requirements of the new piece of software. SDLC provides a visible way of measuring and improving the development process, helping companies maximise efficiency at each stage.
The Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC) consist of six steps:
Planning
This is where the end user, sales department and software developers collaborate to decide key information about the product, its purposes and how it is supposed to work.
Requirement Analysis
After a thorough analysis of the requirements and planning steps to reach the target, the concept of the product or integration is put into practice by a group of software engineers. A “Software Requirement Specification” (SRS) document is compiled to include everything that must be developed to complete the project.
Software Design
During this phase, the overall system architecture is designed by defining the functionality of each module as well as their interaction with third-party modules.
Software Development
The product is built and coded following a set of best practices and guidelines and use the programming tools they have at their disposal to develop the product.
Testing or Quality Assurance
The code is tested to make sure it is free of bugs, adheres to the end users’ requirements and correctly interfaces with other software products together with the underlying hardware.
At Cortech we firmly agree that quality assurance testing is about more than fixing any bugs with software, it is about establishing quality standards and implementing the checks and balances needed to ensure the product or integration meets said standards.
Deployment
This step is where the final version of the product is released to the end user or to the market. Maintenance is performed over time to change the system architecture according to future needs.
Within the SDLC there is a variety of different models your business could implement, of course which one you choose is all dependant on the size of your team, on the size of the project, on the complexity of the project, on the experience of your developers, on the tools you are using, and more importantly, it depends on your preference.
In conclusion the Software Development Life Cycle shows you what is happening, and exactly where your development process can improve, while ensuring that high-quality software is produced which meets or exceeds customer expectations while reaching completion in agreed times and cost estimates.
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Member-created content 4 months ago | From members