Software Development Life Cycles, often abbreviated as SDLC, is one of the processes to design, develop and test high-quality software. It is basically a framework that defines tasks associated during the software development process. It aims to satisfy the customers needs and expectations, along with various parameters such as completion time, cost estimates, etc.
It primarily consists of seven phases, and in this blog, we have a look at them and try to shape our basic understanding of Software Development Life Cycles.
Requirement Analysis: Phase 1 of Software Development Life Cycle
This one is the first and the important step in the Software Development Life Cycle. It is just like planning out the path of Software Development according to the client requirement. Just like making a plan before execution, this step includes gathering of information from users and stakeholders, which act as input for the Development plan. With this step, the actual picture of the Development project is viewed along with minor details as well such as the Planning, risk factors, etc. These details help to draft the timeline of the project.
The Feasibility Study Phase
This is phase two. As the word suggests, the “feasibility” is all about the scope of the project and the software. There are various kinds of feasibility associated such as Economic feasibility, Operational Feasibility, Organizational feasibility, technical feasibility, and so on.
The feasibility study helps to test the scope of the software in various parameters such as the project’s ability to get completed within the designated time, with available technical specifications, within a particular user’s environment, and so on.
Apart from that, in this phase, a SRS(Software Requirement Specifications) document is also prepared which enlists everything that should be designed and prepared during the SDLC.
Design Phase of Software Development Life Cycle
This phase consists of two parts, namely, the High Level Design and Low level design. While the high level design contains the overall system with covering details at a macro level, the low level design details the high level design at a micro level.
The high level design contains the key aspects related to the list of modules, a brief functionality of each module, database tables with key elements and the complete architectural diagrams of the project.
On the other hand, low level design includes detailed functional logics, complete input and outputs for the modules, all interface details and listing of the error messages.
Coding Phase of the SDLC
It is the longest phase of the Software Development Life Cycle and starts right after the Design Phase. Developers have the most of the responsibility here. The tasks are divided into unit modules and thereafter assigned to the developers. Hence, the developers start the programming as per the decided programming language.
Here, developers also write the test cases for each component that tests the code which they have written. Alongside, they review each other’s codes too. Further they also have the task of deploying the software to the environment.
The Testing Phase in the SDLC
After the unit testing has been completed by the developers and software is completed, it is deployed into the testing environment. Here, the functionality of the software is checked as per the documented information of the software design shared with them.
The testing phase can discover some bugs or errors, by the quality analysts and the testing team. These have to be then fixed by developers. After fixing the bugs, the developer’s team sends the updated design report to the testing team and the cycle continues until the software totally becomes bug free.
Installation/Deployment Phase
Its main purpose is to put the solution into the production environment. Sometimes the deployment is done in a stage wise manner too. The product must be deployed first in the staging environment and be checked for any deployment issues and further be deployed to the production environment for client feedback.
Maintenance: The final step towards Software Development Life Cycle
So once the software has entered into the fully operational phase, the maintenance becomes the most important and key task to be carried out. It includes software upgrades, repairs and software repairs in case it breaks while running. Sometimes it also happens that few errors might get reported in the maintenance phase too, these have to be fixed during additional testing or through upgrading the version of the software.
