1. What is SDLC?
- The SDLC is a structured approach that guides the entire software development process from inception to deployment.
- Assists in ensuring the efficiency, quality, and success of project development. By breaking down the software development process into specific steps, the SDLC provides a roadmap for the project, project managers, and stakeholders to collaborate collaboratively, and provides a team is capable of producing reliable and up-to-date software products
Why is the SDLC important?
- Software development is always a balance of time and resources.
- It’s easy to waste a lot of both without proper organization and priority! This means more lost revenue for the company, unhappy customers and disappointed employees.
- To put it another way, imagine you are on a journey with no map or idea of where you are going. That’s where the SDLC comes in—the SDLC map.
- SDLC helps to optimize project design and ensures the continuity of software projects. It also ensures that everyone involved knows what’s going on. When people follow the SDLC process, such as developers, inspectors, and customers working together, projects are better organized, risks are reduced, costs are contained, and the end results are achieved absolutely is reliable, high-quality software.
2. What are the 7 steps of the SDLC?
Step I: Structure and Conceptualization: The first Step of the software development life cycle is, not surprisingly, planning.
During this Step, the project scope, goals, and requirements can be defined together as a team. Planning includes establishing timelines, allocating resources, and identifying potential risks to project success.
Step 2: Requirements: Now that you have an idea, this phase requires you to really dig into the project requirements. At the end of this step, you should have a clear idea of functional and non-functional needs. Here is an example of some of the requirements.
Functional Requirements:
- The website should allow users to search by list, search for specific items and add them to their shopping cart.
- The checkout process needs to be streamlined and intuitive, reducing the number of steps one has to take to complete their purchase.
Inefficient Requirements:
- The website should be responsive and provide a consistent user experience across devices and screen sizes.
- The website should be able to handle at least 1000 concurrent users without significant performance degradation, especially during peak sales periods.
Step 3: Design: Now that you know what the program or feature should do, it’s time to get visual. In this step, the software architecture, user interface and system components have been developed. The goal is to create a blueprint that developers can follow to create actual software. Tools like Figma or Adobe InVision can be used here.
Step 4: Implementation: We write any code only after we know what the software needs to do and how accurate it needs to be!
Also known as coding or development, this phase involves turning the design into working code. Developers actually write software using programming languages and tools.
Step 5: Test: In this step, the software will be tested to ensure that there are no bugs and errors before it reaches the manufacturers and users. This can be manual and/or automated testing, depending on the team’s QA strategy. This ensures that the software works as intended and meets the defined requirements.
Here we also outline how the new regulations will integrate with existing systems, software, and services.
Step 6 : Deployment: After thorough testing, the software is deployed to real users. The code will be integrated into production and released. This category can also include marketing a new or innovative product so that people are aware of its existence and include a list of releases.
Step 7: Configuration: The last part of the SDLC is the ongoing maintenance and support of the software.
This includes addressing any issues or bugs that arise, updating to improve functionality, and ensuring that the software keeps up with evolving technology
3. The SDLC model
There are different ways to manage the software development process, to meet different project requirements, team mobility and risk tolerance. The selection of an appropriate model depends on factors such as project scope, client involvement, size of development team, and ability to accommodate changes in the development process
Here's a breakdown of the four most popular SDLC models you'll encounter:
A Waterfall Model:
- The waterfall model is a linear process in which progress proceeds through specific stages from requirements gathering to maintenance without revisiting previous stages.
- Suitable for projects with well-defined and stable requirements.
Agile Diagrams:
- Agile is an iterative approach that emphasizes collaboration and flexibility, breaking down projects into short sprints for incremental improvement and continuous customer feedback.
- Arguably one of the most popular models in recent decades, Agile is ideal for businesses where requirements are continuous and customer engagement is critical.
- If you want to see exactly how it differs, we’ve done a comparison of Waterfall vs Agile methodologies.
The Spiral Pattern:
- The spiral model combines conventional development with risk assessment, including cycles of planning, risk assessment, engineering, and reassessment.
- It is best suited for complex projects where risk management and flexibility are key factors.
Kanban Model:
- Kanban is a visual and intuitive approach to software development that focuses on supply chain continuity and workflow quality.
- Work items are represented as documents on the viewboard, and teams drag work from one platform to another as capacity allows. Ideal for projects with variable priorities.
- We also did a comparison of Kanban vs Scrum, more from a product management perspective, but definitely useful for developers.
4. Advantages of SDLC
Using a software development lifecycle helps keep things organized in software development, ensuring everyone knows what they need to do and when. The SDLC in a nutshell:
- It makes businesses safer
- It makes people work better together
- Make sure the software works properly and does what it’s supposed to do
Essentially, the SDLC helps ensure you’re on the right track to building awesome software that works well.
Conclusion:
- The software development life cycle (SDLC) is the process by which software is designed and implemented.
- It guides developers and teams through planning, designing, testing, and eventually releasing new code. As a software engineer, knowing the SDLC helps you develop structured, reliable, and productive software.
- As technology evolves, new tools like generative AI are shaking up the SDLC process, making development even faster and more exciting. So, whether you are coding or designing, SDLC is your key to building exceptional software in the digital world.
