The Software Development Life Cycle (SLDC) concept. But on several occasions it is complex to decide which is the best development methodology between Waterfall Model, Evolutionary, Agile SCRUM or other new models and therefore how to deal with the development life cycle, that is, planning, requirements, design, development, testing, implementation and maintenance.
What is the Software Development Life Cycle (SLDC)
SDLC it is a process followed by the organization's technology department for a project. It includes seven main phases to create software or hardware. This methodology has as purpose improve the development process and software quality.
Phases of the development life cycle:
- Planning
- user requirements
- Design and creation of prototypes or proofs of concept
- Solution Development
- Tests on the final development
- Product deployment completed and tested
- Operations and maintenance tasks
The action plan must be well constructed to reduce delays and meet deadlines, budgets and objectives. To be successful in this competitive digital environment, the company must select between the different existing methodologies (waterfall, agile, etc.) in order to achieve effective and efficient software project development.
The SLDC is intended to enable successful production of the solution, with quality and that meets or exceeds customer requirements, within budget and on schedule.
Following the SLDC process provides a detailed view of the entire system, resources, schedule, and goals. It allows the highest level of management control and documentation. The development team understands what they need to build and why. Both the client and the technology department decide in advance on the objective and establish the specific plan to achieve it, knowing the costs and necessary resources. The main advantages of this approach are:
- It makes it easy to measure progress and costs at each stage of the process.
- Improves control and monitoring of important or complex initiatives.
- It involves well detailed and complete steps.
- Design reviews help ensure the reliability and quality of the developed solution.
- It provides adequate documentation of the system at a technical level for subsequent revisions.
- If there are changes to project members, new members can continue at the point of interruption.
- Helps evaluate, schedule and estimate deliverables.
- Ensures correct and timely delivery to the customer.
- It provides a framework for a standard set of activities and deliverables.
- Improve development speed.
Stages of the Software Development Life Cycle (SLDC)
1.- Planning
In this phase, all the tools necessary for the planned scope of building the solution are identified and assembled. Includes and knowledge of customer requirements and the budget, time and resources available to achieve ultimate success. The result of this phase is also known as the "feasibility report". In this preparation process, the three things that are mandatory to take into account are:
- Identification of the system for development
- Feasibility evaluation
- Project plan creation
In addition, in this phase, we also weigh our options to see if it is worth starting the development of a software or program for your investors or for the company in general. It also serves as a phase to evaluate our company's business and software capabilities.
1.- Requirements
Detailed requirements gathering is a preliminary process that in many cases is overlooked, or not given the necessary time or detail. The organization needs a high degree of collaboration from and with the technology departments in order to make the new solution and its improvement criteria understandable.
Architects, developers, and product managers collaborate to document the final business processes. This phase of the system development life cycle helps to ensure correct compliance by compiling the information in a single document, being accepted by all those involved and producing subsequent follow-up.
Sometimes the resulting document is called a Software Requirements Specification or SRS (Software Requirements Specification).
3.- Design and Prototype
Software developers and architects start designing software after they have identified the requirements. Often rapid prototyping is also included in the design process. This generates a clearer idea of the final result from the end customer's point of view, and allows important issues such as customer experience, usability, etc. to be included. This approach requires a comparison of the solutions that exist in the market through detailed studies and analysis.
At the end of this phase, the teams obtain design documents with the patterns and components chosen for the project, and the code used as a starting point for further development needs.
4.- Construction
Once the software design is finalized and approved, the next step is the actual construction, the development of the code. Developers start building the entire framework using their chosen programming language to write code. Tasks are broken down into units or modules in the coding process and assigned to specific developers. Coding is the big step of SLDC.
Developers will obey specific predefined coding guidelines during this process. They will also use programming tools like compilers, interpreters, debuggers to build and run the code.
The entire process is measured by applying KPIs and Management by Objectives defined in the planning phase.
5.- Tests
When the build is complete, testing of the end result and its modules is started. Since software testing is necessary to avoid errors, test sets are prepared both at the level of use, results, scalability, forcing of errors of use, etc., checking in each case the errors produced.
This exhaustive review is also carried out by different types of clients with different profiles, so that, during this process, any problem found is assigned to the developers so that they proceed to solve it.
After each change, retests and regression tests are performed until the software is as planned by customer expectations. Testers refer to the requirements document to ensure that the software conforms to the customer's standard.
6.- Production
After the cerfified and successful tests, the deployment of the software begins in the production environment so that consumers can start using the product. In some cases, companies prefer to push the product into different environments or delivery phases, such as an additional staging or testing area.
It allows all stakeholders to safely play with the product before it is introduced globally to the market. This approach allows to detect any final errors before launching the product.
7.- Maintenance
When the software goes through all the stages without complications, a maintenance cycle is carried out in which it is updated and modified from time to time to adapt to changes and make improvements to it.
Additional aspects
The plan derived from following these phases is almost never perfect when it hits reality. Additionally, as real-world conditions change, software needs to be updated and advanced to align with new market requirements and habits.
The motion DevOps, for example, has changed the SLDC. Developers are now responsible for more steps in the entire development process. New values also appear, such as moving towards the user's side in a more proactive way compared to a position that is more reactive to the requirements.
When development and operations teams use the same set of tools to track performance and determine defects from inception to decommissioning of an application, it provides a common language and faster knowledge transfers between teams. .
On the other hand, Application Performance Management (APM) tools can be used in both the development, QA, and production environment. This keeps all participants using the same set of tools throughout the development lifecycle.
Methodologies
waterfall. Cascade Model
This model is the oldest and easiest to understand. With this methodology, one phase is finished before starting the next. Each phase has its own mini-plan and each phase "cascades" into the next. The biggest drawback of this model is that small details left incomplete can delay the entire process.
Agile
It separates the product into cycles and delivers a functional product very quickly. This methodology produces a succession of throws. The testing of each release feeds back the information that is incorporated in the next version. The drawback of this model is that the heavy emphasis on customer interaction can lead the project in the wrong direction in some cases.
VIEW Effective project management
Iterative Model
Repetition is emphasized in this model. Developers build a version very quickly and for relatively little cost, then test and improve it through successive, rapid releases. A big downside here is that it can quickly consume resources if strict controls are not in place.
V-shaped model
An extension of the waterfall model, which performs tests at each stage of development. As with its similar waterfall methodology, this process can encounter obstacles due to leaving small requirements for later phases.
big bang model
This model is high risk as it spends most of its resources on development and, although it works best for small projects, it lacks the full requirements definition stage of the other methods.
Spiral Model
The most flexible of the SLDC models, the spiral model is similar to the iterative model in its emphasis on repetition. The spiral model goes through the planning, design, construction, and testing phases over and over again, with incremental improvements at each step.
SLDC Benefits
A well-executed SLDC process produces the highest level of management control and documentation. Developers understand what they should build and why. All parties agree on the goal from the start and see a clear plan to get to that goal. Everyone understands the costs and resources required.
Various obstacles can make an SLDC implementation more of a development problem than a development aid tool. Failure to take into account the needs of customers and all users and other interested parties can result in a poor understanding of system requirements from the start. The benefits of the SDLC only exist if the plan is faithfully followed. The main benefits are:
- It facilitates the measurement of the advances and the costs of the system.
- Improves control and monitoring of large or complex projects.
- It involves well detailed and complete steps.
- Design reviews help ensure the reliability and quality of the solution.
- Provides extensive technical, operational and business documentation of the system.
The importance of SLDC can only be understood when it is applied. It makes tasks more manageable and by following these 7 stages of the software development life cycle, it produces the expected solutions.
