Building Great Software

This stage, which also includes project requirements, is the most important part of the SDLC process. It is performed mainly by the development team, along with input from customers. This stage is the foundation of the analysis stage. Sometimes, we'll study their competitors to determine ways to stand out. Once all information is presented it will identify potential risks and give the basic project outline.

Once we understand your business, your users, and case scenarios, we'll begin establishing requirements and goals. The analysis requires gathering and interpreting facts, as well as diagnosing issues with the current system and recommending improvements. This can be accomplished in part by studying end-user information needs and removing inconsistencies. Think of this stage as the problem-solution step. The development team determines where obstacles lie and identifies ways to fix them.

In this stage, the team uses the discovery and analysis stages to design the product. The requirements and goals dictate the design approaches. The Customer would review the initial prototype, and a design approach is selected based on their feedback. Risk assessment, market research, design modularity, budget, and time constraints must all be taken into consideration. Included are screen layouts, business rules, process diagrams and any other documentation needed. Developers and software engineers must be able to develop and deliver the system based on this information with minimal additions.

This stage is the start of actual development and programming. Developers use various programming tools like interpreters, debuggers, and compilers to generate the code, along with high-level programming languages like Javascript, React, Java and more. Developers determine the language to use based on the type of software along with customer requirements. The customer may start seeing parts of their project come to life on a development or staging environment.

This stage involves bringing the separate parts of the project together into a dedicated testing environment to check for errors, bugs and other issues. During the testing phase, the product is checked to ensure that defects are reported, tracked, fixed, and tested again until the product meets quality standards. This is the last stage before the project enters production and usually the customer will be involved in this process.

When testing is finished and the product is ready for deployment, it is time to release it into the marketplace. This can happen in stages or all at once, depending on the organization’s strategy. After the product’s release, maintenance is carried out for the customer. The ultimate goal of the maintenance phase is to ensure that the product remains relevant and high quality. It involves ongoing evaluations of the system’s performance.