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In this article, you’ll learn about What is Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC) and it’s Phases.
What is Software Development Life Cycle
SDLC is a systematic process for building software that ensures the quality and correctness of the software built. SDLC process aim to produce high-quality software that meets customer expectations. The system development should be complete in the pre-defined time frame and cost. SDLC consists of detailed plan which explains how to plan , build, and maintain specific software. Every phase of SDLC life cycle has its own process and deliverables that feed into next phase. SDLC stands for software Development Life Cycle and is also referred to as the Application Development Life cycle.
Why SDLC?
Here, are prime reasons why SDLC is important for developing a software system.
- It offers a basis for project planning, scheduling and estimating.
- Provides a framework for a standard set of activities and deliverables.
- It is a mechanism for project tracking and control.
- Increase visibility of project planning to all involved stakeholder of the development process.
- Increase and enhance development speed.
- Improved client relations.
- Helps you to decrease project risk and project management plan overhead.
SDLC Phases
The entire SDLC process divided into the following stages
- Phase 1: Requirement collection and analysis
- Phase 2: Feasibility study
- Phase 3: Design
- Phase 4: Coding
- Phase 5: Testing
- Phase 6: Installation/ Deployment
- Phase 7: Maintenance
Phases 1: Requirement collection and analysis
The requirement is the first stage in SDLC process. It is conducted by the senior team members with inputs from all the stakeholder and domain experts in the industry. Planning for the quality assurance requirements and recognition of the risk involved is also done at this stage.
This stage gives a clearer picture of the scope project and the anticipated issues, opportunities, and directives which triggered the project.
Requirement Gathering stage need teams to get detailed and precise requirements. This helps companies to finalize the necessary timeline to finish the work of that system.
Phases 2: Feasibility study
Once the requirement analysis phases is completed the next sdlc step is to define and document software needs. This process conducted with the help of ‘Software Requirement Specification’ document also known as ‘SRS’ document. It includes everything which should be designed and developed during the project life cycle.
There are mainly five types of feasibilities checks
- Economic : Can we complete the project within the budget or not ?
- Legal : Can we handle this project as cyber law and other regulatory framework/compliances.
- Operation feasibility : Can we create operation which is expected by the clients.
- Technical : Need to check whether the current computer system can supports the software.
- Schedule : Decide that the project can be completed within the given schedule or not.
Phases 3: Design
In this third phase, the system and software design document are prepared as per the requirement specification document. This helps define overall system architecture.
This design phase serves as input for the next phase of the model.
There are two kinds of design documents developed in this phase
1.High-Level Design (HLD)
- Brief description and name of each module.
- An outline about the functionality of every module.
- Interface relationship and dependencies between modules.
- Database tables identified along with their key elements.
- Complete architecture diagrams along with technology details.
2.Low-Level Design (LLD)
- Functional logic of the modules
- Database tables, which includes types and size
- Complete details of the interface
- Addresses all types dependency issues
- Listing of error messages
- Complete input and outputs for every module.
Phase 4: Coding
Once the system design phase is over, the next phase is coding. In this phase, developers start build the entire system by writing code using the chosen programming language. In the coding phase, tasks are divided into units or modules and assigned to various developers. It is the longest phase of the Software Development Life Cycle process.
In this phase, Developers needs to follow certain predefined coding guidelines. They also need to use programming tools like compiler, interpreters, debuggers to generate and implement the code.
Phase 5: Testing
Once the software is complete, and it is deployed in the testing environment. The testing team starts testing the functionality of the entire system, This is done verify that the entire application works according to the customer requirement.
During this phase, QA and testing team may find some bugs/defects which they communicate to developers. The development team fixes the bug and send back to QA for re-test. This process continues until the software is bug-free, stable and working according to the business needs of that system.
Phase 6: Installation /Deployment
Once the software testing phase is over and no bugs or error left in the system then final deployment process starts. Based on the feedback given by the project manager , the final software released and checked for deployment issues if any.
Phase 7: Maintenance
Once the system is deployed, and customer start using the developed system, following 3 activities occur
- Bug fixing – bugs are reported because of some scenarios which are not tested at all.
- Upgrade – Upgrading the application to the never versions of the Software.
- Enhancement – Adding some new features into the existing software.
The main focus of this SDLC phase is to ensure that needs continue to be met and that the system continues to perform as per specification mentioned in the first phase.
