Even though technologies, methods, and perspectives on building high-performance, scalable software services have changed, responsibilities and actions have not. To produce and deliver high-quality software, top casino software developers and other software developers use a series of phases known as the Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC) must be followed. An SDLC typically consists of six main stages. To develop new apps, you need to follow this process.
When product managers understand how the SDLC process works, they can help guide their teams. Additionally, it assists you in communicating progress with stakeholders and understanding milestones. In this article, we will go over the six main stages of the Software Development Life Cycle.
-
Planning & Analysis
The first stage in the SDLC includes two parts: a planning phase, in which you gather requirements from your clients or stakeholders, and a requirement analysis phase, in which you look at a product’s feasibility, revenue potential, production cost, and user needs. A feature prioritization framework can help you choose what to make, what not to make, and what to make first based on the value of software/updates, cost, time, and other factors.
The second stage of the software development process begins after the software or update has been determined to be in line with business and stakeholder goals, feasible to implement, and addresses users’ needs.
-
Design
Design is the point at which you put pen to paper. Software is built based on the original vision and plan, including a design for the system, programming language, templates, platform, and application security. It is also here that you can illustrate how the software responds to the actions of the user.
Most often, a prototype will be developed during the design phase. It allows the team to visualize the product and make changes without having to rewrite code by creating a pre-production version.
-
Development
Development is the process of turning product specifications and business requirements into software code. A significant amount of time can be spent on this SDLC phase. To keep track of progress during this stage, you must have a timeline and milestones in place so the software developers know what they are expected to do. Tests can also sometimes be run during the development stage to ensure there are no critical bugs.
-
Testing
Before you release the software product, you’ll want to ensure that it functions properly and accomplishes what it’s intended to do. Furthermore, user experience and security issues can be pinpointed during the testing process. A simulated environment may be used for some software testing. There are also simpler tests that can be automated.
In this phase, the following types of testing should be performed:
- testing the performance
- testing the functionality
- testing security
- unit-testing
- usability testing
-
Deployment
Deployment involves delivering your software to its intended users. It is possible to automate and schedule your deployments based on the type of deployment. As an example, you could deploy a feature update to a small group of users (canary release). To create new software, you should be aware of the various stages of the software release life cycle (SRLC).
-
Maintenance
If you’re following the waterfall structure of the SDLC, the maintenance stage is the last. It is evident however that the industry is moving towards a more agile approach to software development, in which maintenance is just a stage on the way to further improvements.
Users can find bugs and errors in the maintenance phase that were missed during the initial testing phase. It is important to fix these bugs to improve user experience and retention. Depending on the situation, these can require going back to the first step in the software development cycle. You can also restart the SDLC phases to incorporate new features into your next update/release.
After learning about the work associated with each part of the SDLC, we can better understand what it means and how it impacts software development. A challenge many organizations face is delivering better software faster. Having a thorough understanding of the SDLC can help teams improve customer service and delivery of new features.
