Software Development Life Cycle Best Practices and Tips

Over the years, businesses and individuals started using software for many reasons that helped them gain multiple benefits. It has guided companies to bring more feature-rich and innovative digital products for their clients and made them stand out from their competitors in the business market. With this high competition, it became essential for businesses to develop and upgrade their software to provide consistent performance.

As a result, software development evolved as a guarantee for most business organizations. Besides, it sparked vital importance for the business world. So what is the software development life cycle?

SDLC involves defined processes implemented by the software industry to build high-quality software that meets the client's expectations at a low cost and within a stipulated timeline. It outlines a standardized framework that defines a detailed plan with phases encompassing activities and deliverables. 

In other words, it gives a draft of the software's design, development, and testing before launching it to the end users. Explore the crucial Requirement Analysis phase in the SDLC.

Additionally, it increases the development speed of the software without compromising on its quality and performance. Further, it mitigates the intrinsic risks that come in the way of project development by early detection of flaws and creating a security framework.

Besides, it reduces the overall project management expenses and production time. As a result, SDLC helps the business to achieve its divergent goals and objectives by evaluating existing software projects and eliminating the pitfalls that cause software failure.

Since we have discussed the importance of SDLC in software development, it is essential to understand how it works and what stages are involved in its process. It explains the requirement for the software and creates the software through defined phases following an easy project track and control.

Software development life cycle (SDLC) is a systematic process that our expert team follows to deliver high-quality logistics software solutions development.

In other words, software development involves the predefined stages of the system development life cycle. Learn more about software development for artificial intelligence.
 

• Planning Phase
• Requirements Gathering phase
• Design phase
• Development phase
• Testing phase
• Deployment phase
• Maintenance phase

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In this blog, let's observe each phase in the software development process, the activities involved, and its output.

What are the 7 Stages of the System development life cycle?

Following and implementing software development life cycle best practices and defined stages can help the business organization to deliver the best solutions for the end users. It ensures the process is well-organized, smooth, efficient and dynamic. 

Besides, it increases the visibility and transparency of each stage for seamless workflow in the team and mitigates the risks of miscommunication. So, let's look deep into each phase of SDLC:  Explore comprehensive documentation for software development.

1) Planning Phase

What is the Planning phase in SDLC?

The first stage in the software development life cycle is the planning phase or feasibility study. It involves the developers and software engineers identifying the primary aspects of digital product management and production. The importance of the planning phase is that it guides the team to develop high-quality software for the client.

Here, the senior developers discuss with the client to understand their requirements and needs for building the desired software. They collect the necessary information for the upcoming development process. 

Moreover, they plan and outline the goals, objectives, production costs, structure, resources, and technical requirements. It helps to identify the issues and work towards the solutions. The planning phase also determines and allocates the problems and tasks to structure the software. Discover top-notch software development services.

Furthermore, the clients can evaluate the project plan and discuss potential options needed for the software. They examine if the developed method in this phase aligns with their goals and missions.

Activities involved in Planning Phase

• Identify strategic objectives
• Outline the scope of the problem in the existing system and find a solution
• Cost and time estimation
• Resource funding
• Scheduling the project
• Provisioning the project

The output of the Planning phase

The development team will get an idea of the technical approaches to implement the project and determine its feasibility.

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2) Requirements Gathering Phase

What is the Requirements Gathering Phase?

As the name suggests, this stage in the software development life cycle involves gathering requirements mentioned by the clients. The requirement phase guides the team in defining and developing specific details for the new software. Here, the development unit focuses on and assesses the system functionality to finalize the clients' needs. Moreover, they perform research and analysis of software requirements to know if it aligns with the end users' expectation.

Furthermore, the development team decides on the SDLC methodologies to develop the software. They determine the ideas and needs for software prototypes and see if the project plan satisfies the objectives before moving to the next steps. Explore various software development methodologies.

At the end of this phase, the software development team creates an SRS (Software Requirement Specification) document that includes all the requirements for the software they are about to build. Creating this document prevents the unit from overdrawing additional costs and resources.

Activities involved in Requirements Gathering Phase

• Develop an overview of the project
• Perform functional assessment of the software
• Document the product requirements
• Finalize the clients' needs
• Create product groundwork

Outputs of Requirements Gathering Phase

The outcome of the requirement gathering phase is developing software requirement specification or SRS document encompassing the goals and needs of the software.

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3) Design Phase

What is the Design Phase?

The design phase is the next stage in the software development life cycle process that involves defining the software's architecture and programming. Here, the SRS document acts as a reference for the logical structuring of the software by implementing the programming language.

The development team identifies the significant components and elements of the software. In other words, they create the infrastructure of the software, including user interface, user experience designs, features, databases, security measures, and network requirements.

Moreover, the design phase is a crucial stage in the software development process since it determines the future steps of the SDLC. In this stage, the software architects and developers create prototypes to decide on the user interfaces and best-suited platform for the software to run smoothly. Discover the powerful combination of data analytics and software development

As a result, the developers create a Design Document Specification or DDS explaining the design approaches and software architectures. The client and stakeholders review the document to select the best design solution for the software application.

Activities involved in Design Phase

• Software Requirement Specification to Design Document Specification
• Identify visual elements and components
• Create the architecture, UI, features and other measures
• Decide on data management and storage
• Define architectural modules of the software
• Stakeholders review and select the best design solutions.

Outputs of Design Phase

At the end of the design phase, the designing unit will create a DDS that defines how to code the software that lays the foundation for the next step of the software development life cycle.

4) Development Phase

What is the Development Phase?

At this phase, the development team turns the design and prototype into a solution by writing the code required for the software. In other words, the actual development in the software development life cycle starts at this stage. Here the developers refer to the SRS and DDS documents to craft the programming code.

Moreover, they use different programming tools for compiling, interpreting, and debugging the code and follow code standards according to the guidelines presented by the client.

Besides, the programmers find potential flaws in the planning process during this phase and resolve the errors by troubleshooting solutions. Therefore, this stage demands good teamwork between developers to identify bugs and issues in the code. Explore popular software development frameworks.

Further, they use different high-level programming languages at this stage, like C++, Java, PHP, C#, etc.

Activities involved in Development Phase

• Use programming language to turn the software design into source code
• Eliminate potential errors and bugs
• Use programming tools like interpreters, assemblers, compilers, and debuggers
• The development team follows code guidelines set in DDS
• Build the first version of the software

Outputs of Development Phase

At the end of this phase, the client will get fully functional and testable software.

5) Testing Phase

What is the Testing Phase?

After developing the software, it undergoes a testing process to ensure there are no bugs and errors in the software that cause software failure later. Testing is an essential step in the software development life cycle since it maintains the quality of the software applications.

Here, the testing team of the software development process tests every aspect of the code to verify and validate the software. Besides, they check if the software meets all the requirements and needs put forward by the client.

In the modern SDLC methodologies, testing activities are involved throughout the stages of the development process. In today's scenario, the tester uses automation testing tools to support and automate the testing process instead of manual testing.

As a result, in the testing stage, the software defects get identified, tracked and fixed until it reaches the required quality standard, delivering a bug-free and robust product.

 

Activities involved in Testing Phase

• Spot and fix bugs and errors
• Checks if the software aligns with the requirements and needs
• Involves unit testing, integration testing and end-to-end testing
• Tests software performance
• Checks every features work as expected

Outputs of Testing Phase

The outcome of the testing phase is a thoroughly tested software product suitable for deployment.

6) Deployment Phase

What is the Deployment Phase?

Once the software is developed and tested, the team can release the software to the production environment. Here, in the deployment stage, software gets deployed according to the strategy of the business organization. Either the software gets released to the user directly or to a limited segment within the organization.

The gradual opening of the software will help minimize the risk of potential errors. As a result, it provides the stakeholders to produce a final dynamic software.

The deployment step happens automatically for the software development life cycle that uses CI/CD pipeline framework. However, even then, the developers must be alert since the deployment process can be complex. Nevertheless, it guides the business and development team to deliver improved software for the end users.

Activities involved in Deployment Phase

• Introduced to a small group of users within the organization
• User-acceptance testing
• Checks for final errors before releasing the software

Outputs of Deployment Phase

Thoroughly tested and functional software is ready for the end users to use.

7) Maintenance Phase

What is the Maintenance Phase?

After the software gets released to the market, the development team has to maintain the software for the existing customers. They must be alert and provide updates and changes to the software according to the reports of the users.

Besides, they are responsible for monitoring and keeping track of the software's performance. In other words, they handle the residual bugs, new defects, and security vulnerabilities. Besides, they ensure the software's user experiences and interfaces are intact for the users.

As a result, this phase is essential for the software to stay in the market for a long time. It helps the developers to modernize the product according to the future needs and requirements of the users.

Activities involved in Maintenance Phase

• Continuous tracking of software performance
• Fixing new defects, bugs and security vulnerabilities
• Make changes according to the needs of the users
• Addition of new features and elements

Outputs of Maintenance Phase

End users get fully developed and monitored software with new upgrades and features.

Conclusion

A well-defined software development life cycle carries many benefits for the development team and the business organization. It ensures a quality software product for the end users, satisfying their needs and requirements. Besides, it guides the developers and testers to work in unity without any flaws. Moreover, it provides a well-organized outline for the development team to execute the software development process. On the other hand, for business organizations, SDLC improves their software application and guides them to gain more sales and revenue.

Frequently Asked Questions

1. What are Software Life Cycle Models?

The software development process involves defined processes that ensure high-quality and dynamic software for the clients within the budget limit and a stipulated timeline. The SDLC methodologies are available to make the development process more efficient and productive. The following are the methodologies in SDLC:

• Agile
• Waterfall
• Iterative
• Spiral
• Lean model
• V-modelAn agile methodology is an approach to the software development process that involves frequent changes to the development in the ongoing release cycles. At each cycle, the software undergoes a test to identify and fix issues in the development process.
   

2. What is the Software Development Life Cycle in Agile?

An agile methodology is an approach to the software development process that involves frequent changes to the development in the ongoing release cycles. At each cycle, the software undergoes a test to identify and fix issues in the development process.

3. Why is the Maintenance Phase important in SDLC?

The maintenance phase is crucial in SDLC since it monitors and modernizes the software regularly according to the future needs of the end users. It maintains the software performance, UI, and user experience. Besides, it fixes new bugs, security vulnerabilities, and defects in software applications.