What is the Software Development Life Cycle?

When working on software development, it is important to follow a standardized procedure. Otherwise, it will not be possible to manage the deliveries in an effective manner and end up with positive results. That’s why it is important for all the software development teams to have a clear understanding about the Software Development Life Cycle. In every software development service, special attention is being paid towards sticking to the software development life cycle. It helps them to end up with positive results at the end of the day.

What is software development life cycle?

Before understanding the steps of the software development life cycle, it is important to be aware about the definition of it. The software development life cycle is a process that is being followed by the software development teams in order to come up with the best quality software applications. When following the life cycle, it is possible to take the maximum use out of available resources and get the project completed within the shortest possible time. That’s because the software development life cycle focuses on every single step that is associated with developing software. They include the development stage, altering stage, implementation stage and the maintenance stage.

The different steps in software development life cycle

Software development life cycle can be considered as a methodological and a step by step procedure. Below mentioned are the prominent steps that are associated with the software development life cycle. These steps complete the life cycle and all people who are into software development projects and software development service should have a clear understanding about this.

1. Discovering the gaps

The first stage of software development life cycle is to identify the gaps. Software needs to be implemented in order to fill in a gap that exists. In other words, the software is providing a solution to a problem that people face. Therefore, a proper gap analysis needs to be done in order to figure out the exact problem of people and help them get that covered by providing an all-around solution. The solution should be complete and it should be in a position to help people make their lives easy. Hence, it is important to seek the assistance of industry experts, sales people, customers and stakeholders throughout this phase.

2. Planning

Once all the gaps are identified, it is important to go ahead and plan for the software development project. In here, the specific software development methodology is also selected based on the client requirements. Then a project plan and a project timeline are implemented. At the time of compiling the project plan, the project team also identifies the resources and expenses involved with the project. In addition, they pay special attention towards all the risks that are associated with it.

3. Design

After the completion of planning stage, the software development team starts working on the designing. This process is also known as Design Specification. In here, the software specifications and requirements of the clients are transformed into the design. The stakeholders provide their feedback throughout the designing process as well. Hence, it is important to incorporate the feedback of stakeholders and make sure that they are happy with the designing at the end of the day. This will help the software development team to stay away from a lot of unnecessary expenses in the long run.

4. Building

Once the designing phase is completed, the software development service would start working on the developments. In here, they start creating what the customers are in need of. This is the phase where the code is being written as well. Information collected during all previous stages is analyzed properly at the time of developments. Then it is possible to end up with the best output, while minimizing the expenses.

5. Testing

Once the developments are completed, the software development service focuses on software testing. In here, the testing team verifies whether the customer has got what is needed or not. In addition, the software is being tested according to all possible test cases in order to determine whether it has been implemented successfully or not. All the defects that are detected at the time of testing will be raised back to the development team. The development team will have to fix those defects, before the software is deployed.

6. Deployment

Once quality check is passed, it is possible to go ahead with the deployment. This is the most critical phase out of all. That’s because the real users will start using the product in this stage. Therefore, it is important to double check and make sure that everything is in order. The software development service cannot simply let any mistakes to happen during the deployment. All the mistakes that they do will end up causing large scale financial losses.

7. Maintenance

Once the software is successfully deployed, it is possible to work on the maintenance of it. Issues will arise at the time of using the software. The software development team will need to attend to those issues. Then the issues need to be fixed within the shortest possible time. The fixes can be delivered to the clients as updates or patches. In addition, new client requirements will also come up. In such instances, the development team will need to go through the software development life cycle again for the newly captured requirements.

Conclusion

As you can see, software development life cycle is a methodological and a well-organized procedure available for the development of software. Hence, it is important to follow this process and make sure that the teams end up with receiving positive results at the end of the day. A team that follows software development life cycle has very little chances of going wrong as well. Hence, all teams should start following this as the best practice.