What is SDLC

Planning

Figure Software development life cycle

The long form of SDLC is the Software Development Life Cycle. SDLC defines the
standard frame that is used in software development. It helps in Planning the project, calculating
the cost and determining the time required for the project. It makes the develop time faster.
Developers can communicate with the client during the project development process and can
reduce the risk. SDLC consists of 7 steps. There are

1. Planning
2. Analysis
3. Design
4. Implementation
5. Testing
6. Deployment
7. Maintenance

Planning
Planning is the first step in SDLC and it draws the plan that biggest mission or purpose of
the project. This step consists of two steps project initiation and project management. Project
initiation is the first step in the beginning of a project. It defines why do you make this project,
and who will do this part. Its goal is that everyone understands the project and make ready to
begin. Project management manages the entire project. It checks the project which finished on
time and done within the budgets. So, the main facts of the planning step are to define the
timeline, objectives or other components required for the project.

Analysis
The analysis step is to gather and record the requirements needed for the software. On the
other hand, the analysis step is the documentation step and it collects the detail information that
user or client needed for their entire software. Analysis phase has 3 steps.

1. Analysis strategy
2. Requirements gathering
3. System proposal

1. Analysis strategy
Analysis strategy is the most important part of the Analysis step. It is to guide what requirements
needs for gathering, analyzing and documenting in this system or software. It focuses on how to gather
the requirements from user for the software by interviewing or from survey or observation.

2. Requirements gathering
Requirement gathering is to collect the detail information like what the software should
do, what features are needed for the software.

3. System Proposal
The system proposal is a document created in the step of analysis. The developer makes a
detailed document to solve the problems or meets requirements that user expected. In this case,
this makes how the software will be designed, developed, and implemented. It helps the
stakeholders to understand the entire project that the developer developed. So, the main point of
the system proposal is clear information about what the system will do or how it will work.

Design
After the analysis phase, the design or architecture design is created depend on the
requirement gathering during the analysis step. If you were creating a phone, you would make a
wireframe of a phone that you created. You need the detailed information to describe its shape
and form. There are 6 steps in the design phase: design strategy, Architecture design, interface
design, platform design, database and file specifications and program design. In this case, design
strategy, architecture design, interface design, platform design, database and file specifications
and program design are included respectively. Design strategy is a simple document that created
the system meet the user’s needs. It focuses on the planning the design of the structure such as
functions, layouts and how this system will look. Like an architecture design, it builds the
architecture design for the system that describes physical system or services that supports the
functioning of other area such as software, hardware, and other network infrastructure. Next, the
interface design is about creating how the user communicate with this software. In another way,
how to make user-friendly for the system. It focuses on creating the buttons, textbox, font-color,
and overall style for user this software easily. Platform design is choosing the platform to run the
software or program such as operating system or hardware requirements or database system. The
next one is database design and file specifications. Database design is how to store the data in
this software like creating table or defining the relationship, etc. file specifications is to describe
the structure, format or handling the files that used in this software. The final one is program
design that is planning how to structure the code for the system like separated into little modules
and then define which part will be logic or flowchart or workflow.

Implementation (Coding)
After the design phase, the developers start to code based on the design structure or
convert the design phase into source code. In the fourth step of SDLC, the developer writes the
code for entire program and they divide into units or modules to work for numerous developers.
Then, they start to code using programming language that they want.

Testing
In this step, the functionality of the entire system is tested by the testing team, tester,
software tester, developers, end-users or client. It focuses on whether the software work and
whether software meet all the requirements needed for the program. Its goal is to remove the
bugs or errors and enhance various parts of the software such as performance, user-experience,
security and so on. In short, developers must perform this step because it improves the overall
quality of the software as expected by the users.
Deployment
Deployment is the method of making the software available for use such as software
installation, configure, share the product by phones, laptop, or websites. Then, we need to give
the documentation and training for the end-users how to use this software.

Maintenance
Maintenance is one of the most important steps in the seven steps of SDLC. Developers
may maintain the software that they developed for working well for a long time. Let’s image
about that you define your software’s warranty is only 3 years. After using the software for 3
years, we need to updates and fix this software because of the becoming errors. So, this step is
very important to keep the software for a long time.

Sequential Methodology
Sequential methodology means a linear and structured process and each phase must be
completely finished before the next one start. This model is used when the client exactly
understands their entire project requirements and there is no biggest changes or updates. In short,
we use this model, the project domain and requirements are well-defined. Two examples of
sequential methodology are waterfall and V-model.

Waterfall Model
Waterfall model is a traditional software development and it follows sequential process
where each phase must be completely finished before the next phase. This method documents the
detailed information and step-by-step implementation. The phase in waterfall model can’t
backward just like the waterfall or water flowing from top to bottom. The phases of waterfall
model are requirement gathering analysis, design, development, testing, implementation
and maintenance.

Requirement Gathering and Analysis

In this phase, all possible requirements related for the system are gathered by
interviewing or observation.
Design

After gathering all the requirements, the overall design and architecture are needed for
the system. This also helps to describe the software and hardware requirements required for the
system.

Development

Sequential diagram

Library management system