Software Development Life Cycle: Basic Steps to Strong Product

After realizing and experiencing the alluring advantages of outsourcing, more and more companies are getting inclined towards outsourcing software development projects to major offshore destinations. However, having an in-depth knowledge of software development life cycle becomes a priority task for not only the service provider software development company but also the client to keep a check on the project progress throughout the software development.

Software development is an intricate process that requires a lot of planning, implementation and testing. You can not develop perfect software with full functionality unless it passes all the tests and quality analysis. So, companies should keep a check on SDLC while experiencing software development outsourcing to a company. No software is perfect and in full functionality unless it overcomes all the tests.

A software development company put special emphasis on SDLC to produce the most effective, functional and mission critical software that can help one's business in a long run. The software development life cycle (SDLC) is a pre-set framework that is used by all software development companies for through understanding and developing effective information systems and software.

Though software development life cycle can have many versions and each version carries its own plus points and minus points, but all version have same steps or activities that are discussed below;.

Feasibility

First of all, the project is checked for its feasibility if it should get the go-ahead. If the project is to proceed, then a project plan is thought out together with the budget estimates for future stages of development.

Requirement Analysis and Design

After testing the feasibility of the project, system or software requirements are gathered. Business analysts perform a thorough study and analysis of the business needs of the organization and the market trends. Necessary changes are proposed. From interface design to data design, every program is discussed in this stage to keep the software of high level design.

This phase considers the overall structure of the software and defines the strategy for its development. That's requirement analysis and design phase is believed to be the most critical part of software development life cycle. Any flaw in this phase may prove very expensive for further stages of life cycle. In simple words, this phase considers the logical system of the product.

Code generation and Implementation

This phase involves the code translation of the well-thought design. Desired programs are created using a conventional programming language and with the help of programming tools like Compilers, Interpreters, Debuggers. The code is generated using various high level programming languages like C, C++, Pascal, Java, etc.

Testing and Quality Assurance

Apart from requirement analysis, testing is another crucial stage of SDLC that decides the effectiveness and functionality of the product. This phase unravels the bugs and errors of the system. Initially the individual modules of programs are tested separately which is followed by testing of the system as a whole. The system testing includes the integration testing to check whether the interfaces between modules are working properly, Volume testing to ensure the capability of the system to work on an intended platform with the expected load of data, and acceptance testing to check whether the system does what the user needs.

Maintenance and Support

Software system maintenance is an inevitable need. It undergoes various changes once it is delivered to the client. Software development should be flexible enough to inculcate required changes with time and according to changing business needs. Inevitably the software system will need maintenance. Software may undergo certain changes once it is delivered to the customer. There are many reasons for the change. Change could happen because of some unexpected input values into the system. In addition, the changes in the system could directly affect the software operations. Therefore, the software should be developed in order to accommodate changes that could happen during the post implementation period.

Each and every stage of SDLC carries its own importance and plays a key role in success of any software development project.