System Development Life Cycle (SDLC) Model

This is also known as Classic Life Cycle Model (or) Linear Sequential Model (or) Waterfall
Method. This model has the following activities.
1. System/Information Engineering and Modeling

As software is always of a large system (or business), work begins by establishing the
requirements for all system elements and then allocating some subset of these requirements to
software. This system view is essential when the software must interface with other elements
such as hardware, people and other resources. System is the basic and very critical requirement
for the existence of software in any entity. So if the system is not in place, the system should be
engineered and put in place. In some cases, to extract the maximum output, the system should
be re-engineered and spruced up. Once the ideal system is engineered or tuned, the development
team studies the software requirement for the system.
2. Software Requirement Analysis

This process is also known as feasibility study. In this phase, the development team visits the
customer and studies their system. They investigate the need for possible software automation in
the given system. By the end of the feasibility study, the team furnishes a document that holds
the different specific recommendations for the candidate system. It also includes the
personnel assignments, costs, project schedule, target dates etc.... The requirement gathering
process is intensified and focussed specially on software. To understand the nature of the
program(s) to be built, the system engineer or "Analyst" must understand the information domain
for the software, as well as required function, behavior, performance and interfacing. The
essential purpose of this phase is to find the need and to define the problem that needs to be
solved .
3. System Analysis and Design

In this phase, the software development process, the software's overall structure and its nuances
are defined. In terms of the client/server technology, the number of tiers needed for the package
architecture, the database design, the data structure design etc... are all defined in this phase. A
software development model is thus created. Analysis and Design are very crucial in the whole
development cycle. Any glitch in the design phase could be very expensive to solve in the later
stage of the software development. Much care is taken during this phase. The logical system of
the product is developed in this phase.
4. Code Generation

The design must be translated into a machine-readable form. The code generation step performs
this task. If the design is performed in a detailed manner, code generation can be accomplished
without much complication. Programming tools like compilers, interpreters, debuggers etc...
are used to generate the code. Different high level programming languages like C, C++, Pascal,
Java are used for coding. With respect to the type of application, the right programming
language is chosen.
5. Testing
Once the code is generated, the software program testing begins. Different testing methodologies
are available to unravel the bugs that were committed during the previous phases. Different
testing tools and methodologies are already available. Some companies build their own testing
tools that are tailor made for their own development operations.
6. Maintenance

The software will definitely undergo change once it is delivered to the customer. There can be
many reasons for this change to occur. Change could happen because of some unexpected input
values into the system. In addition, the changes in the system could directly affect the software
operations. The software should be developed to accommodate changes that could happen during
the post implementation period.

B. Prototyping Model

This is a cyclic version of the linear model. In this model, once the requirement analysis is done
and the design for a prototype is made, the development process gets started. Once the prototype
is created, it is given to the customer for evaluation. The customer tests the package and gives
his/her feed back to the developer who refines the product according to the customer's exact
expectation. After a finite number of iterations, the final software package is given to the
customer. In this methodology, the software is evolved as a result of periodic shuttling of
information between the customer and developer. This is the most popular development
model in the contemporary IT industry. Most of the successful software products have been
developed using this model - as it is very difficult (even for a whiz kid!) to comprehend all the
requirements of a customer in one shot. There are many variations of this model skewed with
respect to the project management styles of the companies. New versions of a software product
evolve as a result of prototyping.

C. Rapid Application Development (RAD) Model

The RAD modelis a linear sequential software development process that emphasizes an
extremely short development cycle. The RAD model is a "high speed" adaptation of the linear
sequential model in which rapid development is achieved by using a component-based
construction approach. Used primarily for information systems applications, the RAD approach
encompasses the following phases:
1. Business modeling

The information flow among business functions is modeled in a way that answers the following
questions:

What information drives the business process?

The information flow defined as part of the business modeling phase is refined into a set of data
objects that are needed to support the business. The characteristic (called attributes) of each
object is identified and the relationships between these objects are defined.
3. Process modeling

The data objects defined in the data-modeling phase are transformed to achieve the information
flow necessary to implement a business function. Processing the descriptions are created for
adding, modifying, deleting, or retrieving a data object.
4. Application generation

The RAD model assumes the use of the RAD tools like VB, VC++, Delphi etc... rather than
creating software using conventional third generation programming languages. The RAD model
works to reuse existing program components (when possible) or create reusable components
(when necessary). In all cases, automated tools are used to facilitate construction of the software.
5. Testing and turnover

Since the RAD process emphasizes reuse, many of the program components have already been
tested. This minimizes the testing and development time.

D. Component Assembly Model

Object technologies provide the technical framework for a component-based process model for
software engineering. The object oriented paradigm emphasizes the creation of classes that
encapsulate both data and the algorithm that are used to manipulate the data. If properly designed
and implemented, object oriented classes are reusable across different applicationsand computer
based system architectures. Component Assembly Model leads to software reusability. The
integration/assembly of the already existing software components accelerate the development
process. Nowadays many component libraries are available on the Internet. If the right
components are chosen, the integration aspect is made much simpler.