Software life cycle is a series of stages through which any soft product passes from the moment of an idea to the moment the program is released for widespread use. In fact, the life cycle of software development is a process of building and evolution of a software product.
It is important to note that there are many life cycle models, for example:
- cascading,
- incremental,
- spiral, etc.
Any model regulates only the implementation of the stages of a life cycle, but not the life cycle itself, which, in principle, remains unchanged.
Software life cycle
So, the software life cycle has 6 main stages through which any product development goes.
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Requirement analysis
This phase is one of the most basic, because it is this stage that forms a further approach to software development. All information collected at this stage determines:
- how the product should turn out “at exit”, starting from its quality;
- requirements for developers;
- possible risks associated with development and implementation of soft;
- approach to how software design will be implemented;
- potential development budget;
- relationship between customer and developer; etc.
In general, this stage is the foundation for all further work.
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Planning
Everything needs to be documented so that unnecessary problems do not arise in future. It is at this stage that all requirements for the product and for the development team (consider devoxsoftware) are written on paper and approved by both sides.
On one hand, documentation is unnecessary bureaucracy. But in some cases, clearly documented requirements protect customers and developers from unpleasant situations and claims.
At this step:
- contracts are signed;
- TR are drawn up;
- a plan and schedule of work is prescribed.
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Architectural design
This level is understood as building the internal architecture of the product, not the external design. Software architecture contributes to implementation of all functionality assigned to software itself. Therefore, they always offer several architectural options so that you can choose the best one that will be able to provide effective communication with all plug-in additional modules.
At the same phase, a stack of necessary technologies and tools is selected.
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Software development
Requirements are spelled out, technology stack is selected, what else remains? That’s right, coding! This is one of the longest stages of a software life cycle, since software is implemented using code.
All features, modules, functionality, interface, etc. are developed at this stage. The result of this stage is a finished working software program.
This stage very strongly reflects the quality of previous stages. Was everything agreed? Is everything documented? Is everything going well according to plan?
Conflicts may arise between customers and developers due to:
- additionally, implemented features;
- lack of budget;
- failure to meet deadlines;
- inexperience of a team;
- customer’s excessive demands; etc.
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Testing
If the product has reached this stage, then it is already a success. However, this is also a very important stage, since it is responsible for how high-quality development was and how high-quality software will “come out”.
Testing can be of different types: from simple automated to complex manual. The goal of any testing is to find possible errors in the program that need to be corrected before the product release. Soft comes out “in hand” with a minimum number of bugs, so a lot of attention is paid to testing.
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Deployment
If the product is developed, tested, if bugs are fixed, then it goes to the last of 6 stages of system development life cycle — release.
Release may be different:
- phased, when software is released to a limited number of users;
- large-scale, when software is available to everyone and actively promoted.
Usually, after launching the software, technical support teams are involved in work, which help users with operational issues and monitor the stable operation of their product.
Conclusion
Software life cycle is the same for absolutely all IT projects. The only thing is that depending on the chosen development models, more or less attention will be paid to one or another stage of a cycle itself.
