Recently, quality software products have been a necessity among businesses, and producing the best has become a goal for any organization to grow. To build great software, you must define a proper plan and process. An organised method with precise techniques and strictly defined steps, known as Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC), can help you transform your idea into a distinct software solution.
Overview of SDLC
In building a profitable application, it’s significant to follow the stages of the software development lifecycle (SDLC). Jumping into software development without a definite plan is a formula for delays, costly failures and overbudgeting. Instead of starting any project in a rush without a proper plan, more companies are turning to SDLC methods that allow them to make high-quality software as fast and cost-effectively as possible.
What is a Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC)?
This Is a process that helps to break down all the steps involved in software creation, from planning, testing, deploying, and coding. It is a method used by the software industry to design, create and test high-quality software.
Organisations define custom SDLCs to develop a predictable, iterative framework that directs the team through all major stages of development. The exact number of phases in an SDLC varies between businesses and projects, and you’ll find that different people give a different number of stages. The main goal of SDLC is to ensure a consistent software development process. Even with its uniqueness, all life cycles go through similar steps. Let’s closely examine every typical phase of an average software development life cycle.
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Let’s dive in!
- Discuss ideas
What is a great industry without an excellent idea? Brilliant ideas lead to excellent products. But, most ideas must go through an evaluation before acceptance. Most evaluation includes ideas that must achieve company objectives, determining solutions and selecting the project’s scope, which must be put in place as part of the planning phase of the software development or product development process.
Let’s look at more points that you can examine in this phase:
- Define your goals
- Identify and list the features that you want in the software
- Make a rough sketch of the software
- Review how you can make your product stand out and identify your target audience
- Identify if you have the necessary knowledge in-house, or will we have to outsource some part(s) of the project?
This stage will involve a team of combined business analytics, leadership, development, operations and security teams. In some cases, asking end users for input can be very valuable.
- Planning
When all ideas have been said and discussed, the next phase is to start planning. In any tech organisation, the Software product development lifecycle has to start with proper planning. This is also called a feasibility study, which helps you determine the technical and financial aspects of your software development process.
While some business owners think that after brainstorming promising ideas combined with the experience of software engineers, they can build superb products, it doesn’t work that way; planning helps you carefully consider the time, resources, budget constraints, and legal implications.
Operational requirements, key activities, and ROI, among other related things.
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- Use the Proof of Concept (PoC)
Once the planning stage is completed, a proof of concept (PoC) is what you should focus on. Proof of Concept is one of the most important phases of the cycle. This phrase assists you in verifying your idea and determining whether the software product development processes will deliver for your company or not and also helps to identify the technical feasibility, likely outcomes and potential roadblocks, and the scope of work needed to overcome them in the project.
- Design Plan
Once the PoC is successful, the design team will provide an app architecture and a user experience design.
The software architecture illustrates the structure of your software, which includes all components and describes how they work together. This step is about attaining the right balance between what the user wants and the industry’s goals.
A UI/UX design is developed before the original development starts so that software engineers create your software in agreement with the approved design.
- Development and Testing
The development phase requires writing code and transforming design documents into software. In which the software engineering team guarantees that the code complies with the software specifications and the stakeholders’ requirements. Generally, this phase is the most time-consuming stage of SDLC, so agile methodologies are recommended to speed up coding.
After the development phase, the product undergoes extensive testing to ensure that the code is clean and fulfils the business goals. However, companies have a large variety of testing methods in examining the products, which include;
Unit testing (functional tests), Integration testing, Security testing,
Performance testing, Acceptance testing, User acceptability testing, code quality testing etc. Always endeavour to incorporate product testing as a required step in your process. This allows you to verify if your application is working effectively.
Read also: Agile Software Development Lifecycle Phases Explained
- Software Deployment and keeping a track
At this stage, the product leaves the testing phase and is prepared to go into production. This final solution is mostly released step-by-step with an implementation method. At the same time, Some projects expect the team to write user manuals or create instructional videos before the software becomes accessible to end users. This phase can be considered one of the final stages of software development because it involves all the processes that make the ready product available for users.
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- Maintain and upgrade
After the deployment stage, maintenance is the new round of SDLC. Once an app is released, you will think that is the end, but you must continue working on it: analyse it, reconsider the app’s design, release updates, gather user feedback, improve the application’s features,
and repeat. This phase receives special attention because it allows the product to be fine-tuned, updated, and enhanced based on real-world input.
Conclusion
Here are the Seven stages of the software product development life cycle, from brainstorming ideas to maintenance which can be modified to meet the needs of any project. It’s a platform that equips every team member in technical and non-technical activities to deliver high-quality code and a solution that meets project goals.
However, no matter how carefully you follow these seven steps of an effective software product development life cycle, success always depends on talented developers and engineers to flawlessly perform the entire process. Struggling with software development? Soar Digital can help you achieve this with our skilful, dedicated software developers. Join us today!
