Software Development Life

Cycle

SDLC or

Water fall Model

Software Development Life Cycle

• SDLC stands for Software Development Life Cycle.

• SDLC is the process consisting of a series of planned activities to develop the software products.

Software Development Life Cycle

•There are following six phases in every Software development life cycle model:

Software Development Life Cycle

Requirement:

• Requirement gathering is the first stage of any SDLC model. This phase is basically the brainstorming phase and often consists of sub-stages like Feasibility Analysis to check how much of the idea can be put into action.

System Analysis:

• This is the second phase of SDLC where the entire system is defined in detail. In fact, it this stage wherein a detailed blueprint of various processes of the software is developed. If needed the system is divided into smaller parts to make it easier more manageable for the developers, designers, testers, project managers and other professionals who are going to work on the software in the latter stages.

System Design:

• In this phase, the physical system is designed with the help of the logical design prepared by system analysts. The analysts and designers work together and use certain tools and software to create the overall system design, including the probable output.

Coding:

• As the name implies, in this stage the software is coded. A team of programmers are assigned by the company to work on the software. More often than not, the work is sub-divided under a sub-phase called Task Allocation, where each developer is assigned a part of the work depending on his or her skill set(s). This helps complete the coding efficiently.

Testing: • When the software is

ready, it is sent to the testing department where Quality Analysts test it thoroughly for different errors by forming various test cases. They either test the software manually or using automated testing tools and ensure that each and every component of the software works fine. Once the QA makes sure that the software is error-free, it goes to the next stage, which is Implementation.

Implementation:

• This is the final stage of software development life cycle. In this stage, if the software is run on various systems by users. If it runs smoothly on these systems without any flaw, then it is considered ready to be launched.

Advantages Of Waterfall Model

The waterfall model is the oldest and most widely used model in the field of software development. There are certain advantages of this model, which makes it, one of the most widely used models as yet :-

• Being a linear model, it is very simple to implement. The amount of resources required to implement this model are minimal.

• Documentation is produced at every stage of the software’s development. This makes understanding the product designing procedure, simpler.

• After every major stage of software coding, testing is done to check the correct running of the code.

Disadvantages of Waterfall Model

• Ironically, the biggest disadvantage is one of its greatest advantages. You cannot go back a step; if the design phase has gone wrong, things can get very complicated in the implementation phase.

• Often, the client is not very clear of what he exactly wants from the software. Any changes that he mentions in between, may cause a lot of confusion.

• Small changes or errors that arise in the completed software may cause a lot of problems.

• Until the final stage of the development cycle is complete, a working model of the software does not lie in the hands of the client. Thus, he is hardly in a position to inform the developers, if what has been designed is exactly what he had asked for.

•

To conclude

• Now that you know the basics of software development life-cycle it will help you develop software with perfection in the near future. For more details, you can look up various SDLC models and find the one that will suit your software the most and put it into practice. All the best!

THANK YOU