Software development lifecycle refers to the series of stages that help transform an idea into a software product. If software developers chronically follow the phases of software development, they get a quality software product that fulfills both the functional and business requirements.
In other words, the software development lifecycle refers to the transition steps that help convert an idea into a workable software product. In this write-up, we will explore the software development lifecycle and its respective phases in detail.
What is Software Development Lifecycle (SDLC)?
Software development lifecycle (SDLC) is a process that a development team follows to develop quality software products. The process ensures faster time to market and optimal utilization of resources involved.
There are seven stages of the software development lifecycle, which include:
- Requirements Analysis
- Planning
- Design
- Development (Code)
- Test
- Deploy
- Maintain
Every software development organization follows the mentioned lifecycle stages; only the methodology might differ. Traditionally businesses followed the Waterfall model where the stages were fixed, and it was impossible to move back to the previous stage. The Agile methodology revolutionized software development.
Agile introduced the iterative and incremental way to develop software while promoting cross-collaboration and normalizing scope creep.
The following section discusses the different phases of the software development lifecycle in detail.
The Six Phases of Software Development LifeCycle
The different phases of the software development lifecycle include:
1. Requirements Analysis
This phase involves finalizing the features that the software will cover. The team needs to conduct product discovery sessions to deeply understand the customer problems and the ways to address them.
It is a good practice to follow the Moscow rule of prioritization, which involves brainstorming around “must-have,” “should-have,” “could have,” and “won’t-have,” features. Here’s what each of them implies:
- Must-Have Features: There are the features that define the software product and focus on solving customer problems.
- Should-Have Features: These are important for the software and add value to the final product. For example, the login feature
- Could-Have Features: It can be a good idea to add these features but do not bring value to the customers.
- Won’t-Have Features: These features are not crucial for the software and can be excluded from the list of requirements
2. Design
This stage involves creating a prototype that validates the UI/UX flow of the software. The focus is to create software that is easy to use, intuitive, and promotes discoverability and findability.
This stage also involves creating low-fidelity and high-fidelity wireframes that help visualize the content and visuals across different screens.
These prototypes are then presented to the stakeholders, the product manager, and the product owner. The design is reworked based on feedback, and this process continues until all the involved parties agree on the presented design.
3. Development (Code)
The development team works in time-boxed sprints and writes respective codes for the features. In the Agile model, product backlogs help list all the features that need to be coded. The sprint planning involves prioritizing features, and backlog grooming help reprioritize features based on pending tasks and changing client requirements.
The developers then share the written code with the testing team at the end of every sprint cycle for review.
4. Test
The testing team conducts a series of manual and automated tests to identify bugs in the software module. In Agile testing, the team does not have to test the entire software at once; instead, testing is a recurring activity that runs alongside development.
The beauty of Agile is the involvement of the entire development team at every stage of development. For instance, the testing team starts writing test cases way before the actual testing starts, and this helps them run automated tests and ensure faster time to market.
The most common types of automated tests include:
- Unit Tests
- Component tests
- Functional Tests
- Prototype and Simulation Testing
The most common types of manual tests include:
- Exploratory Testing
- Usability Testing
- User Acceptance Testing
- Alpha and Beta Testing
Once the testing team identifies the bugs, they report them back to the developers, who again reprioritize their backlog to fix the bugs. This to and fro movement between developers and testers continues until the delivery of quality software.
5. Deployment
Deployment is a software development lifecycle stage that involves releasing the software in the live environment. Earlier, development and operations teams were siloed, which delayed deployment. To bridge this gap, DevOps was introduced, where the development and the operations teams work collaboratively to automate the deployment phase.
Organizations that adopt the DevOps culture implement CI/CD pipelines to automate the significant segment of the deployment phase.
CI/CD stands for continuous integration, continuous delivery, and continuous deployment. Here’s an overview of each of them:
- Continuous Integration: The features are automatically built, tested, and integrated with the other modules. This happens multiple times in a day.
- Continuous Delivery: Involves running automated performance-based tests, reporting back for bugs, automatic retesting, and putting the entire code in the central repository.
- Continuous Deployment: The new features in the central repository are automatically released in the live environment and are made available to the end-users.
6. Maintenance
Modern software development adopts a product mindset instead of a project mindset, i.e., the development team is responsible for the software for its entire lifetime. This, in turn, also defines the crux of the maintenance phase.
Once the software deployment is complete, the development team needs to maintain it throughout its lifetime.
The various maintenance steps include:
- Fixing bugs and introducing patches
- Introducing new functionalities and updates
- Improving software’s performance
The software development team needs to maintain a cadence between different updates to maintain a competitive edge and ensure customer retention. If the timely updates are missing, it will get obsolete in no time and witness a low adoption rate.
Conclusion
Developing quality software that solves customer problems is the objective of any software development initiative. The software development lifecycle defines the process and stages that help develop functional and operable software.
This write-up discussed the various software development lifecycle stages that included — requirements analysis, design, code, test, deploy and maintain. Each of these phases is an integral part of software development and helps guide the development teams in the right direction.
