What’s the Software Development Life Cycle or SDLC: Creating Structure for a Reliable, Scalable Software Delivery

In this guide, you’ll be learning about what an SDLC is and its core phases, how different SDLC models compare, how to choose the right SDLC approach, and how to avoid common pitfalls that software developers often encounter.

What Are the 7 Core Phases of the SDLC?

The seven core phases that make up the software development life cycle or SDLC include planning, requirement analysis, design, coding and development, testing, deployment, and maintenance, each is a required step and each dependent on the success of the one before.

By following these core phases, a software development team will take a software idea from concept to a fully deployed product for your business.

As code is written and tested, refinements should be made with each iteration pushing it closer to the expected and required standards. Furthermore, the code should be documented for future maintenance and in case modifications need to be made.

Phase 1: Planning

The planning stage is when you have an idea for your next application, but before starting actual development you’ll need to make sure you have certain ideas and preparations down such as business goals, project scope (high-level at this stage), timelines, estimated resources, and other initial planning measures such as performing a feasibility study to assess any project risks.

By taking the time to plan out your software project, you’ll have established a strategic direction for your development team and avoid the dangers of wasted effort and resources on any unrealistic or unclear objectives. If you’re unsure, The Provato Team’s consultation and assistance with planning will make sure everything is accounted for early on.

Phase 2: Requirement Analysis

During the requirement analysis phase, you will be communicating with your organization’s stakeholders to perform detailed functional and non-functional requirement gathering, assemble acceptance criteria for the app, and identify any technical constraints. The requirement analysis process will help you discover your application’s must-haves while ensuring stakeholder agreement and evidence-based analysis to avoid any bias that may arise between user needs and stakeholder wants.

Here is a more detailed breakdown of this stage:

• Requirement Gathering: During the initial step of this phase, you will be gathering function and non-functional requirements. Also, it will be important to identify and document the needs and expectations of not just your stakeholders, but also your relevant clients and users.
• Requirement Analysis: This next step is when you’ll be refining the requirements you’ve gathered, looking out for potential conflicts between them and if there are any redundancies to remove. Then you can prioritize those requirements so that they are aligned with your business objectives and your project.
• Requirement Documentation: Now it’s time to document your refined requirements in a clear, concise, and easy way for all involved in the project to understand. This document is usually referred to as a Requirements Specification Document or RSD.
• Requirement Validation: This fourth step involves the verification of your documented requirements, ensuring that they reflect both the needs and expectations of your stakeholders. This is also when you’ll be making sure that those requirements are feasible in implementing.
• Requirement Management: In this step, you’ll need to establish a system for tracking and management requirements and communicating those changes to those involved at any phase in the SDLC.
• Requirement Prioritization: Finally, you can determine what requirements should be ranked the most important and addressed first before others.

If you’re unsure of how to proceed in building out your requirements, The Provato Group’s consultation phase can assist with determining project feasibility, finding redundancies, and offering any related domain expertise to ensure your requirements are clear, validated, and will meet your users’ needs.

Phase 3: Design

In the Design phase, an application development team will be translating your app’s requirements into system architecture, visual and functional prototypes or mockups, planning for database structure and organization, data flow and how that data will be processed and stored, component design, security design, and UX/UI design.

The design phase may be separated into two layers: System Design and Detailed Design. You might hear them called High-Level Design (System Design) and Low-Level Design (Detailed Design).

System Design involves factors such as the system architecture, technology stack, and data flows, and components. Meanwhile, Detailed Design goes into the particulars within each component such as user interface elements, data structures, algorithms, and database schemas.

Communication between a developer and client is key. The Provato Group leverages a feedback loop that keeps you involved such as with regular prototype reviews, regular meetings, and sprint demos.

Phase 4: Development and Coding

The Development/Coding phase is when everything established during the design phase is translated into actual code. Coding will be used to build your software module by module, ensuring that it follows agreed-upon designs. A program without properly written code will be ridden with poorly functioning features, inefficient backend functionality, and even security vulnerabilities.

The Provato Group’s developers ensure clean, modular coding, and future scalability during this phase. During this phase, code review is also performed by The Provato Group for quality assurance, finding issues, and ensuring that coding standards are adhered to. Code should be tested to ensure that it functions as intended and continues to meet requirements.

As code is written and tested, refinements should be made with each iteration pushing it closer to the expected and required standards. Furthermore, the code should be documented for future maintenance and in case modifications need to be made.

Phase 5: Testing

In the Testing phase, your developer team or a quality assurance (QA) team will conduct a series of tests to search for issues, defects, and bugs, and make sure that your new software solution is stable, secure, and ready for the world to experience.

The different kinds of tests performed include unit testing, integration testing, system testing, acceptance testing, performance testing, security testing, and usability testing.

• Unit testing ensures individual components and modules are working properly and are free of defects.
• Integration testing prevents interaction problems from forming between different modules or components in your software.
• System testing involves the testing of the entire application as a whole system.
• Acceptance testing refers to testing your software solution to ensure it meets all end-user requirements.
• Performance testing helps avoid surprise situations by evaluating your application’s performance in different conditions.
• Security testing protects your software against threats and vulnerabilities by searching for weaknesses.
• Usability testing guards against user dissatisfaction by evaluating the user interface and user experience and ensuring they meet expectations.

By performing diligent QA testing and bug detection, The Provato Group protects you from costly fixes that would be needed later down the road. This saves time, protects unnecessary resource expenditure, and keeps the development process on time.

Phase 6: Deployment

Deployment is the managed process of officially releasing your application into a live environment for users to enjoy. From data loss and broken features to downtime and frustrated users, these are the problems that await a deployment phase that goes wrong. Fortunately, there are proven deployment strategies that The Provato Group uses to reduce the risk of the aforementioned problems and lead to project success.

Deployment and their success strategies come in different forms based on which SDLC model or development methodology is being used:

Phase 7: Maintenance

After release, bugs and issues may still be found, which is where the maintenance phase comes in. Find a developer, like the Provato Group, that offers ongoing support to keep your application product relevant and responsive, allowing it to evolve with both user and business needs.

More than just fixing bugs, there are different types of maintenance that can be carried out for your software solution:

• Corrective Maintenance: Fixing of bugs, errors, and issues found during post-launch.
• Adaptive Maintenance: Updates to allow your system to work in new environments (new or updated OS, browsers, devices).
• Perfective Maintenance: Utilizing user feedback, enhancements are made to the UX, app performance, and new features are added.
• Preventive Maintenance: Proactive security updates, code refactoring, and technical debt reduction for optimal performance and security.

As described in Phase 6, there are different SDLC models that your business may want to employ. But different variables will determine which is likely best for your software project.

How Do You Compare Popular SDLC Models?

Compare each popular SDLC model for factors including deployment style, deployment frequency, the risk level of the model, and the model’s feedback loop. These are not for every business and depending on the specifics of your software project you’ll find one more suitable than the rest.

Now that you know about how these models measure up to each other, it’s time to understand how to choose the right one for your project.

How Do You Choose the Right SDLC Model for Your Project?

To choose the right SDLC model for your project you must consider and understand several factors such as project size and scope, your stakeholder involvement, time constraints, risk level, requirement stability, and even team maturity.

You’ll be asking yourself questions like “Do you have a tight time-to-market, or an inflexible budget?” and “Are you more focused on team collaboration and adaptability because your project has the potential to evolve over time?”

Factors to Consider When Choosing Your SDLC Model

Consider the following factors and their associated questions while working with a developer team. The answers you come up with will help guide the decision-making process.

• Project Size and Scope: Is the application project small and well-defined, or is it large, complex, and evolving?
• Stakeholder Involvement: Will stakeholders be providing ongoing feedback, or will it just be upfront input?
• Time Constraints: Is the time-to-market more important, or does thorough planning take priority?
• Risk Level: Does the project have regulatory, security, or technical risks? What are the risks of change during the project?
• Requirement Stability: Are your requirements fixed early in the project, or are they open to changing during the project?

Team Maturity Is your team more experienced with certain SDLC models or development styles over others?

Navigating these factors and key questions may be challenging based on the unique situation surrounding your software project—you don’t need to do these questions alone and can have The Provato Group partner with you throughout the initial planning and requirement phases to go over the goals of your app project, any constraints, and craft an approach that maximizes success.

Keeping your answers in mind, look to the quick decision matrix below to see which model you match up with.

When to Not Use DevOps with CI/CD Alone

DevOps with CI/CD empowers a team with faster delivery, but it doesn’t always work well on its own, such as when a developer is not ready to adopt automation, or they require approvals before each release. This means that DevOps may be better used when integrated with another model such as Agile or Scrum.

Even with the right SDLC model chosen for your project, there are common mistakes that development teams may stumble upon that get in the way of the method’s intended effectiveness.

How to Avoid Common Pitfalls in the SDLC?

To avoid common pitfalls in the SDLC like scope creep, incomplete requirements, poor cross-functional communication, tool over-reliance without proper process, inadequate QA, and neglected maintenance planning, there are tasks that can be done to protect against these problems.

Here is a list of those pitfalls and their respective solutions…

To avoid these pitfalls, enlisting the services of an experienced developer is necessary. You can trust The Provato Group for maintenance and support are part of the SDLC, ensuring post-launch support for implementing performance optimizations, feature enhancements, hotfixes when needed, and regular security audits, vulnerability assessments, and patch management.

Next Steps: Finding an Expert Navigator of the SDLC

Even if you don’t know how to navigate the software development life cycle, you don’t need to—The Provato Group has the experience and expertise to walk you through each step, help you with planning your project out, and ensuring that your final software product will not only have a successful launch but also meet your user needs for the long-term.