Software Development Life Cycle

There are mainly 7 different stages of SDLC. They are 1-Project initiation 2-Requirement management 3-Project planning 4-Design phase 5-Coding 6-Testing 7-Implement and maintenance

1. Project initiation
There are 2 kinds of firms in s/w industry A. Project based firms B. Product based firms

Project based firms

The initiation of the project takes place by the sales team of the company. Sales agent tries to fix up a meeting with the clients through e-mail, telecon, through coldcalls.After fixing the meeting with the infrastructure or IT manager or senior manager of client side. Both the parties tries to introduce the kind of work that they are involved into. The sales person also tries to gather information on outsourcing of the project for development and testing. If the client has a requirement of outsourcing the project the sales person would gather initial requirement like environment and major business functionalities. After collecting this sales person would come back to his company, discuss the minutes of meeting with Sales Manager and Business Analyst. The second meeting with the client will comprise the sales person his Manager and Business Analyst where questions and counter questions will be asked by both the parties regarding the intended outsourcing project. After coming back the sales person will send a project report and proforma invoice which speaks about the temporary cost of making the project. If these two are accepted by the client MoU is signed between the client and project based company to outsource the project from the client to the intended project based company.

Product based firms

For a product based firm the Marketing Division of the company will do a competitive intelligence (CI). It involves understanding the features natures and behavior of the competitive s/w already available in the market. It also involves understanding the future strategy of the competitive firms. CI is done by sending the Marketing guys from the firm or from outsourcing the CI work to a third party Marketing firm. The Marketing person with the set of questionnaire interacts with the end customers and collects the necessary info about the competitive s/w and company. Based on the info collected in the

Marketing survey, the Marketing analyst of the product based firm analyses the advantageous, disadvantageous, needs and aspiration of the s/w used by the end customers. Based on this analysis the marketing analyst releases the report which recommends the kind of the product that meets and Marketed in the Market. This report is reviewed and understood by the Management who further gives the green signal and appoints a Business Analyst to check out the Business strategy and scenario for the intended product.

2. Requirement management
For a project based company the Business Analyst may be sent to the client site for understanding the process and the domain. The Business Analyst will try to analyse and ask the intrinsic behavior of the application to be made from the client site For a product based company the business analyst will define the business flow business process and individual types to create the products. The Business Analyst will also consult the System Analyst and System Architect before coming out of the above defined solutions The Requirement Management comprises two sub stages A. Requirement collection B. Feasibility study

Requirement collection
The requirement collection involves collecting the functional and non functional requirement for the projects or products. After collecting the requirements the Business Analyst conducts feasibility study

Feasibility study
The feasibility study involves three different sub stages A.Technical feasibility B.Economic feasibility C.Social feasibility

Technical feasibility
In this Business Analyst tries to analyze if the project or the product can be made with the set of h/w and s/w as defined by the clients For example a client wants to make a web application. It should flash 5.0 based, work in internet explorer browser 5.0 and have a response time of 10 millisecond,. The analysis will be done in the following manner

It is feasible to make the application with flash 5.0 and it will also work in internet explorer 5.0 but the condition for the response time as given by the client cannot be met as application with flash 5.0 approximately takes 25 mili sec to download the application or to play back the application. If the client is accepting the above theory then the business analyst will further initiate the process for SDLC if the client needs a work around as he is very adamant with response time the B.A need to give an alternative solution. The B.A can recommend using the flash mx as download time or the playback time or responding time is 3 milisec. Along with this the client has to be told that flash mx will work with internet explorer 5.0 or above and the cost of its is higher than that of flash 5.0 if the client accepts it the B.A moves with other process of the life cycle

Economic feasibility
For a project based company the B.A has to show the return on investment (ROI) for the application to the client. He has to show his Management that there is a profit of developing this project.

Social feasibility
The application developed should not create any kind of tension between society communities countries race etc.this feasibility study is done to check the kind of the language and the functionalities used for developing the application After managing the requirement the BusinessAnalyst in consult with System Analyst and System Architect authorizes the BSD BRS BD The BRS speaks about the functionalities and the non functionalities of the business scenario. It also speaks about the h/w and s/w requirement for making application After the BRS is made the Business Analyst call for a review meeting to review the BRS documents. Any issues questions doubts or changes required will be discussed and carried out in the documents. After final draft of the BRS it will be sent to the client site for acceptance any changes required by the client will be discussed and adhered. Finally the BRS base lined or blueprinted or bibled after base lining the document cannot be changed by both the parties base lining means acceptance of the document by both the parties For a product based company base lining means the docs is accepted by the top level management of the company The second document for this particular phase of the SDLC is SRS The SRS is developed by referring to the BRS and it is generally authorizes by the System Analyst in consultation with the System Architect and Business Analyst the SRS will comprise of the functional and non functional requirement to the minute level. It will also define the risk factors, Management of the risk, minimum system requirement under which the application will work.

The review process and the base lining process are done in the same manner as in the BRS

3. Project planning
There are 3 main documents in the project plan phase A. Real time budget B. Real time schedule C. Point of contact The project plan document is authorized by the senior project manager in consultation with the Project Manager of development team Project Manager of test team system analyst system architect and B.A. the review process remain the same and the base line happens for the project plan documents

Real time budget

The budget is decided for the whole project which comprises the development as well as testing. The budget will be decided on the no.of persons required for the individual testing and development their designations etc. billing is done to the client on a per/hour basis for 8 hrs a day and 22 days a month. The total cost for individual person will be depend on his designation which can be (X$*8*22) man month Where x is depend on designation In a similar fashion all the billing structure for the no.of persons and added to make the budget. The budget also comprise of infrastructures and overhead cost

Real time schedules

The schedule includes the completion stage or time period of the completion in the form of the dates. Each division be it develop or testing have their own completion criteria which has to be strictly maintained there is also completion date for the individual phase of the testing and the individuals modules developed, the real time schedule is equal to temporary completion date+ budget time

Point of contact
It comprise of the single person name contact number and address at both the client site and development site or testing point of contact is necessary to channelize questions doubt or issues raised by the development team, testing team or by the client so that misconfusion and confusion is avoided The project plan document is called S.P.M.P (Software Project Management Planning)

4. Design phase
The design phase comprise of three different substages 1.high level design 2.low level design 3.interface design Note: Some times the interface design can be the part of the LowLevel Design document too. This depends on the policy and strategy set by the software company

A. High level design

This particular document is particularly developed by project lead OR senior developer for which the project plan document and requirement documenmt are referred. The High Level Design consists of the sections like flow chart diagram, data flow diagram, ER diagram class diagrm. All these subsections and the presence of it in the High Level Design Document also depend on the policy and strategy of the s/w company

a.Flow chart
It is a logical analysis which describes the complete of the application usages, pictorial notations are used to define a flowchart diagram

b.Data flow diagram

This document talks about the data thru each and every line of the code ,date flowing from one module to another module and the interdependencies of the module related to the data. The DFD is also represented by pictorial diagram

c.ERdiagram
Every object is an entity and every entity has class and every class will have properties. Relating these entities together forms the ER diagram. The ERdiagram is again a pictorial representation and the concept has been taken from UML unified modeling language UML is a pictorial representation of development life cycle which uses different kind of diagram for different stages of software development life cycle. The initial version of the UML was 0.1 which had 6 diagrams and the latest version of the UML is 2.2 has 13 diagrams . for representing SDLC in pictorial manner ER diagram is part of the UML concept Apart from relating the entities in the application it also relates the entities within the backend system i.e data base servers

d.Class diagram
The class diagram depicts the kind of classes and properties that the application will have and the uses of these classes in the application

Classification is also a part of UMl concept is always represented in a pictorial manner

B.Low level design

This document is generally made by the Senior Developer in consultation with the team working under him. The document is reviewed by the Project Lead before the final approval of this. The LLD consist of the pseudocode, the framework descriptions and the schema analysis

a. Pseudo code
These are the codes written in plain English language that doesnt follow syntax or standard. This particular document describes the codes of the applications in such a manner that it looks like real time code which it is not. The uses of this pseudocode are specific in the integration of the modules together for development purpose and is also required for integration testing. In terms of the development the modules which are not been coded. If pseudo code are used for creating a stub for the uncoded module. This stub is then integrated with the coded modules to show the applications functionality and uses, for the purpose of the integration testing, specifically topdown/buttom up the pseudocode are used again to create a stub. And these stubs are then integrated with coded modules to check or test the functionality of the interfaces.

B.Frame works
The construction of the frame work is actually making the building blocks for the database. The building block of the database symbolizes the database or the foundation on which the database will be made.

c.Schema
The schema is specifically used in a database to define the characterstics of the data table. It symbolizes the no of rows and columns in each data table selections of datas in the data table and the relation ship between the data tables by defining its foreign key and public key.

C.Interface design
This document specifies the user interfaces and the properties of it to be used it in the application.

Note: all the documents described above has to be reviewed first in the review meeting and after the satisfactory results will further go for base lining.

5. CODING
This stage comprises of the 4 different stages 1. Solution mapping 2.solution integration 3.system integration 4. system release

Solution mapping
It is the coding of the minute functionalities of the modules or sub modules. It also comprises of coding individuals controls or buttons and the relation of these controls or buttons and the relation ship of these controls also known as mapping of the controls with the frameworks

Solution integration
This stage can be started only after the completion of the solution mapping stage. After the modules are coded it is required to code the interfaces for integration of the modules. The solution integration involves coding of these interfaces

System integration
After the application is involved it is in a third party environment to see if it is functioning properly. Third party includes the operating system, the integration myths .h/w and the third party s/w and the integration of the application with the peripheral devices. The solution integration is actually coding the interfaces required for the application to integrate with the o/s and peripheral devices.

System release
The system or the application is finally released to be used in client environment. Any patch work fault error, configures are taken into consideration for rectification purpose.

6. TESTING
This is the 5th stage of the SDLC and comprise the following stages, unit testing, done after solution mapping is over. 1.Unit testing is done after the solution mapping is over 2.system testing is done after/along with mapping solution integration

3.system integration is done after/along with system UAT-user acceptance testing It is done after /along with the system release

7. Implementation and maintenance

The last stage of the SDLC takes place after testing phase is completed. Implementation involves releasing the application to the client for its use in the client environment. Client after getting satisfied signs the sign off document with the development firm If required by the client a maintenance contract is the also signed with the development firm for a specific period of time. The period of contact may be annually or can be more than that. After the expiry of the time period contract can be renewed. If desired by the client and the development firm. The maintenance can be a development job which includes the modifications of the features of the application from one technology to another technology or porting the database server. it can also mean porting from one environment to another. Maintenance also includes testing which generally involves the regression and retesting of the application under contract