Software Development Life Cycle

Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC) Explained

1. 1
   Application Requirement Analysis

   The requirement collection is the first stage in web and mobile application development. It is performed by the senior team of business analysts, technical architects, and project managers together with all the industry’s business stakeholders and domain experts.

   • Scope definition of the entire project.
   • Planning for the quality assurance requirements.
   • Definition of anticipated issues, opportunities.
   • Recognition of the risks involved.
   • Timeline definition.
2. 2
   Feasibility Study

   When the requirement analysis phase is done, the next step is to define and document software needs in the 'Software Requirement Specification' (SRS) document. It has everything that should be structured and created during the application development life cycle.

   There are five main types of feasibility checks:

   • Economic feasibility.
   • Legal feasibility.
   • Operational feasibility.
   • Technical feasibility.
   • Schedule feasibility.
3. 3
   Design

   Based on the SRS document, the team prepares the system and software design to define the IT system architecture. This design phase will be a base for the next coding phase.

   There are two types of design documents that are developed:

   1. High-Level Design (HLD):

   • Brief description of each module and its functionality.
   • Dependencies between modules.
   • Database tables & their main elements.
   • Architecture diagrams.
   • Technology details.

   2. Low-Level Design (LLD):

   • Functional modules logic.
   • Detailed database tables.
   • Complete interface detail.
   • Complete modules input and outputs.
4. 4
   Coding

   The next phase is coding itself, which is the most prolonged phase of the software development life cycle.

   Peculiarities of this phase include:

   • Developers should follow predefined coding guidelines.
   • The whole development is divided into tasks for specific modules development.
5. 5
   Testing

   Once some part of the software coding is complete, it is sent for testing, and the QA team starts testing the functionality to verify that the application works following the requirements.

   The process includes:

   • QA team finding issues.
   • QA team sending issues to the development team.
   • Development team fixing the issues.
   • QA team rechecking the functionality.
6. 6
   Deployment

   Once the software is developed and fully tested, the final deployment process is launched.

   The QA team checks the software in the production environment.

7. 7
   Maintenance and Support

   After the release, the application continues its cycle following three possible ways:

   • Bug fixing.
   • Software upgrade.
   • Enhancement with new features.