SDLC or Software Development Life Cycle determines the series of steps to be performed to develop an application or the efficiency of a software.

The following are the phases defined in SDLC. Each phase has its own process and deliverables that goes into the next phase.

Feasibility Study

System Analysis

Software Design

Coding

Testing

Integration

Implementation

Feasibility Study

Requirement gatheringis the first stage of SDLC. Then the team comes up with a rough plan of software process and analyzes if a software can be made to fulfill all the requirements of the user. The plan is analysed from financially, practically, and technologically to check if it is feasible for the organization to take up. There are many algorithms available, which help the developers to conclude the feasibility of a software project.

System Analysis

System analysis includes understanding of software product limitations, learning system-related problems or changes to be done in the existing systems, identifying and addressing the impact of the project on the organization and personnel etc. Once the feasibility study is completed, the developers decide a roadmap of their plan and try to bring up the best software model suitable for the project. The project team analyzes the scope of the project and plans the schedule and resources accordingly.

Software Design

In this step, the whole knowledge of requirements and analysis is brought to the desk to design the software product. The inputs from the users and the information gathered in the requirement gathering phase are the inputs of this step. The output of this step comes in the form of two designs; logical design and physical design. Engineers produce meta-data and data dictionaries, logical diagrams, data-flow diagrams and in some cases pseudocodes.

Coding

This step is also known as programming phase. On receiving the software design, the coding begins. The implementation of software design starts in terms of writing the program code in a suitable programming language and developing error-free executable programs efficiently.

Testing

Testing is done to measure the performance of the software before it is given to the end users. Errors may ruin the software from critical level to its own removal. Software testing is done while coding by the developers and thorough testing is conducted by testing experts at various levels of code such as module testing, program testing, product testing, in-house testing and testing the product at user’s end. Early discovery of errors and their remedy is the key to developing a reliable software.

Integration

Software may need to be integrated with the libraries, databases, and other program(s). This stage of SDLC deals with the integration of the software with outer world entities.

Implementation

Implementation or deployment means installing the software on user machines. At times, the software needs post-installation configurations at the user’s end. Software is tested for portability and adaptability and integration related issues are solved during implementation.   _{Your Comment}