Software Development
Software development is a magical art of creating a program which can perform a required task following a set of processes. Software development includes numerous steps such as thinking of an idea, designing a rough idea, implementation of the blueprint, testing, bug fixing and many more.
The process of Software Development includes writing and maintaining the code in particular language, in other words, we can say that it includes everything which is involved in the creation of the desired software product via the desired process.
Why Do We Need Software?
Every Business firm or organization needs a software program to perform various tasks which can ease out the work of a person and reduce the requirement of manpower. Software Developers use a process known as the Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC) to Design, Develop and Review High-Quality Software. The purpose of SDLC is to produce something which fulfills the expectations of the customer and completes in estimated time and cost.
Let’s Learn About SDLC In Detail
Software Development Life Cycle is basically a detailed plan which describes how to create, maintain, alter and improve a specific software product (program).
Diagram Depicting The Software Development Cycle
SDLC consists of the following stages:
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Planning:
Business requirements are gathered in this phase. This phase is the main focus of the project managers and stakeholders. Meetings with managers, stakeholders, and users are held in order to determine the requirements like; Who is going to use the system? How will they use the system? What data should be input into the system? What data should be output by the system? These are general questions that get answered during requirements gathering phase.
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Analysis:
In this phase project managers, stakeholders and user (Customer) discuss the requirements of the system, and also discuss the things like “Who is going to use the system?”, “How he will use the system?”, “What type of data is needed?” Etc. After gathering all the information about requirements for the system the process of development moves forward in the direction of designing.
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Design:
On receiving system design documents, the work is divided into modules/units and actual coding is started. Since in this phase the code is produced so it is the main focus for the developer. This is the longest phase of the software development lifecycle.
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Implementation:
On receiving system design documents, the work is further classified into parts (Modules) and actual development of products starts. This Is the longest phase of the SDLC. If the design phase (previous phase) is implemented properly, code generation in this phase is achieved without any problem. Once our software is developed properly it goes for a proper review to check whether it is functioning properly or not.
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Testing:
After the code is developed, it is tested against the requirements to make sure that the product is actually solving the needs addressed and gathered during the requirements phase. During this phase, all types of functional testing like unit testing, integration testing, system testing, acceptance testing are done as well as non-functional testing are also done.
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Deployment and maintenance:
After successful testing, the customer receives the product for their use.
As soon as the product is given to the customers they will first do the beta testing. If any changes are required or if any bugs are caught, then they will report it to the engineering team. Once those changes are made or the bugs are fixed then the final deployment will happen.
Once when the customers start using the developed system then the actual problems come up and needs solving from time to time. This process where the care is taken for the developed product is known as maintenance.
I hope this post’s helped you understand better on the process of software development. Feel free to send us any question in the comment below or via email. See you in the next post!
Phuc Nguyen
Reference Source
https://www.quora.com/What-is-software-development-lifecycle
http://tryqa.com/what-are-the-software-development-life-cycle-sdlc-phases/
https://www.tutorialspoint.com/sdlc/sdlc_overview.htm