The rate and efficiency at which software is being developed has rapidly evolved to shorter development cycles than ever before but sometimes at the cost of thorough test coverage and deficiencies. Industry today typically uses either the Waterfall Model or Agile Model for software development and each has their own advantages and disadvantages.
The Waterfall Model includes the following phases – The requirements may include logical, physical, and user experience or user interface aspects of the system – it is what the customer wants to have developed as the final product. The design phase identifies components or block diagrams for both logical and physical attributes or development paths and the implementation. Verification is just that, it is the phase in which the customers verifies that the product is exactly, according to the contract, what was promised. The Maintenance phase is the customer’s own operations and maintenance area in which the product is to be supported, repaired, and software patched.
One of the most responsive software application development life cycles is the agile software development (ASD) methodology. Essentially, the short iteration between requirements definition, analysis, coding, testing, and reiterative cycling through again helps to create process a product that is flexible. The six basic stages of software development life cycle or SDLC include:
Requirements definition and analysis – in addition to the programmatic, this is the most crucial phase because all other phases will be based on requirements and specifications. During this phase, the team will identify risk and risk mitigation – risk can never be fully rectified but it can be minimized and controlled to some extent.
System analysis – this phase will depend on size and methodology as defined by the project developers and programmers for coding and development. The team will identify all resources required to test and include the methodology and criteria to meet the requirements.
System design – this is the “meat” of the project where the project specifications are translated into the system architecture and overall design. This may include which to use such as Java, C++, or C and the types of resources and software tools that must be included to support testing.
Coding – this is the logical part of the development process where software engineering teams write and code thousands of lines of computer instructions for the system. The teams may be subdivided according to the tasks and development paths.
Testing – is critical in the delivery of a final software product. There is no real way to provide 100 percent test coverage; however, tests must cover as much as possible and, when a bug is discovered, all deficiencies are repaired and re-tested or regression tested.
Implementation – this final phase of the SDLC is a way to perform limited deployment of the software in a semi-controlled environment and with a small user group to ensure that all major bugs are identified and repaired and that the system is stable for full deployment.
