A Look at the Software Development Life Cycle

The way that we live and work has been forever changed by software. Many of us use a variety of different pieces of software on a day-to-day basis. However, for us to use this software, someone had to develop it. As a result, the software development industry is huge, and only getting larger. The revenues in the software development space around the globe is an unbelievable $481 billion.

When companies are developing software, whether for other companies or for the public, they often follow the Software Development Life Cycle (also known as the SDLC). This cycle helps to streamline development and is a consistent and clearly-defined methodology for developing software. It will help software not only be cost-effective but also of high quality.

This article is going to take a closer look at the cycle and the various steps involved with it. From planning to software deployment, this article will cover it all.

1. Analysis and Planning

This phase is all about gathering information. You need to figure out the requirements of the software, what it needs to do, and various other things that might be important to clients. Everyone involved in the product should have a say in this stage, and every idea or suggestion will need to be analyzed and considered. Once the information is gathered, you can begin to plan out the product. This involves thinking of what is required and what everyone wants out of the software.

2. Design

Once the information has been gathered and the software has been planned, it is time to start designing. All of the information that was gathered is used as an input and the team has moved on from thinking about what they want, and into thinking about how they can make it a reality. This phase is similar to planning but is a bit more in-depth and teams will figure out how to bring their plans to life.

3. Build

Once the design plans have been finalized, it’s time to start building the software and writing some code. This stage is all about developing the software that the team has been planning and designing. Developers will often use a variety of different tools to help the code get written as effectively as possible. This should be a fairly straightforward stage, but some hiccups can always occur. 

4. Test

Next, once the coding is done, the team needs to test their code and software to make sure it is okay. This stage is all about finding bugs, deficiencies or other issues in the code. When you release your software, you want it to be working as expected, without any problems. You will likely have to test the software multiple times to ensure it is completely bug-free. 

5. Deploy

Once the software is bug-free and all issues have been ironed out, it is time to deploy it to the masses. Releasing the software will allow your users and clients to begin using the software for the intended purpose. Be sure to keep tabs on how they deploy, and if any problems have arisen during the deployment stage. 

6. Maintain

However, the software being deployed doesn’t mean your work is done. You need to make sure it continues to work well and is maintained. This could mean frequent updates, depending on if things go wrong or not. Adding potential new features and upgrades is also often seen as a part of the maintenance stage. If the software is not maintained, it could potentially lose users very quickly.

In conclusion, hopefully, this article has helped shed some light on the various different steps of the software development life cycle.