Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC) refers to a systematic software creation process that is adopted by software developers and project managers to create, test, design and deploy software systems in an effective and low-risk manner.
It comprises a number of distinct stages that take a project through pre-thinking to the actual implementation and servicing. Requirement Gathering and Analysis is the first phase, during which business needs are identified by the stakeholders, clients and users. This stage makes sure that there is a clear knowledge of what the software has to achieve.
The requirements (functional and non-functional) are documented and feasibility studies are carried out. Then it is the turn of Design phase in which the architecture of the system is designed as per the requirements. The structure of the system is characterized by high-level design, whereas modules and interfaces are the concern of low-level design. Design documents act as development blue print. Development phase ensues which entails real coding according to design requirements.
The programmers type the programming language of their choice and the software begins to emerge. The stage also involves unit testing by the developers to ascertain the proper functioning of each component. Testing phase provides quality and reliability once the coding is finished. The types of tests performed by QA teams are integration testing, system testing and user acceptance testing. Bugs are detected and resolved and the software is made to conform to business and user expectation. During the Deployment phase, the software gets published to production. depending on the deployment plan, it can be rolled out in phases or in one go. And the last stage, the Maintenance, is concerned with constant support, upgrades, and improvements.
That is why the software will keep operating at an optimal level and will evolve to meet the changing needs. Collectively, these SDLC cycles aid in the deployment of quality, reliable and user focused software solutions.
