Systems Development Life Cycle - Assignment Example

Systems Development Life Cycle In our daily routine, it is being notice that to achieve any goal step of processes are performed. In a case as going to office in the morning, sleeping early to get up fresh in the morning is counted to be the first vital step. Deciding the wear house and making it ready by ironing clothes and polishing shoes along with other holding accessories required together is the second step. Taking shower and getting ready with all the other accessories is the third step. To check weather all accessories in hand are complete and dressing suits is the fourth step. Now the individual is ready and have breakfast before going to office where other family members appreciate one's dressing counted to be the fifth step. Sixth and final step, reaches office to start the work. Though we may call this case study as a part of Individual Development Life Cycle. Similarly when we work in an office we analyze the routine of work is somewhat same but with different technologies. As in a case of delivering a production, the factory owner gets a call for a deal. Stakeholders sit together to fully analyze what customers actually require. They understand and come back to their place. They work in a team and gather all requirements they analyze to estimate the budget and revenue. Moreover, they give deep thought to the requirements that if they can full fill or not and if they can do so how can they do The estimation of time and work style also decided. As a document, estimations are text and sent to the customer for his agreement. If, Customer satisfies with the estimation of money, time and work style the deal is won by the factory owners else sometimes negotiation takes place and sometimes rejection of deal may occur. In successful case, business developers give a detail sitting with production managers. Production manager after studying the requirements plan the work and divides into different modules. These modules are assigned to the producers. These producers complete their module and test it. Combination of all modules is again tested with respect to the requirement signed by customer and though a complete product is ready to deliver. This production is safely delivered to the customer and told the method f its usage and other precautions. Customers test the production and starts using the product successfully with a build in trust to the production company. This case now called as the Product Development Life Cycle. Now if talking about System Development Life Cycle particularly then, it is a conceptual model used by the project management involving different steps to develop a project. In other words, it may know to be a process involving number of steps to automate a real time system by dividing the complex project into different small simple projects or phases. System itself is not only the name of a virtual project but it also involves the hardware. Combination of hardware and software is called a system. Hardware are the physical components used by the software where as Software is a set of programming statements to automate a real scenario executed on the set of hardware. The cases above define, may also be the examples of the system development life cycle as processing a group of steps every time to achieve a particular goal is said to be a system. Now if it getting ready for the office or delivering a production, both are the systems of life. Studying the second case of the production delivery may help to understand System development Life cycle easily and quickly. The three main objectives for System Development Life Cycle are to ensure the delivery of high quality system providing strong management controls over the project and maximizing the productivity of the system staff. These objectives may require from the system to be analyzed properly in a matter to use the latest technologies covering all system requirements along with the support of management activities, high usability and providing guidelines to install and use the system. The system must be developed under full concentrated technical activities like system definition that includes, analysis, design and coding; testing system installation composing training, data conversion etc.; production support contains problem management; defining releases, evaluating alternatives; reconciling information over different phases and defining project's technical strategy. Getting forward to management activities, system development life cycle embraces activities like, setting priorities, defining objectives, project reporting and status reporting, change control, risk assessment, step wise commitment, costbenefit analysis, user interaction, managing vendors, post implementation reviews and quality assurance reviews. In order to meet all System Development objective with managerial requirements there are different design approaches. System Development Life Cycle must be an example of a system created using the technique it espouses; it must be a layered approach to analysis, design, installation and production. It must keep what and how distinct while doing tasks and creating the outputs. Last but not least it must organize the information in a hierarchical manner so that users with varying degrees of familiarity can find what they want easily and quickly. SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT LIFE CYCLE (SDLC) To develop the software; different processes is been performed. This set of processes can be named as software development life cycle. There are different models of Software Development and though different software according to features, client requirement and organizational standards are being processed. Commonly used software models are as follows: Water Fall SDLC Model Prototyping SDLC Model Rapid Application Development Model Incremental Model There are many more models, which are being used for developing much risky and huge real time software. But in general, every model has 5 basic steps: Requirement Gathering Design Analysis Implementation Testing Installation Raymond Lewallen [MVP] (Software Development Life Cycle Model, n.d.) shows a very understanding pictorial view of software development life cycle. Requirement Gathering It is the first process where client, manager of the company and other stakeholders meet to develop the software. These few initial meetings allow managers of the company to acknowledge themselves what kind of product client requires. They gather the information from different aspects like; where the software has to use Who are the people who will use What may be the input To a particular what should be the output What are the conditions to use Etc. These all queries and information allows the managers and other stakeholders to develop a long tail of required features. Design Analysis These features gather by the company managers and stakeholders allow the project managers team leaders to analyze the features or requirements deeply and thoroughly. These in-house discussions on the gathered requirements give rise to many other queries by developers and QA engineers. The final feature analysis signed by all stakeholders is given to QA Team Lead and Development Team Lead in a form of document to start work on it. Developers make few pictorial flows of the software fulfilling all the requirements. Implementation Developer starts their coding with respect to the features defined in the document in a specific language. Many Case Tools and other Frameworks are already defined for developers help to make development easy. This is the longest and most complicated phase of software development and though design phase or testing phase may overlap often. Testing Testing is a vital phase of Software life cycle. It is done with respect to the test plans prepared by the Quality Assurance Engineers. They test the implementations via different testing models or tools if the implementation done by the developer completes the requirements defined in above analysis phase. The bugs are reported back to developers to remove and improve the quality of development. Ideas and Suggestions besides Bugs are always welcome by the developers as they improve the quality of the product designed. Fully functional and bug free product is then forward to client. Installation Before complete installation of this information system client implement in a group and test the product in its own environment according to the requirements predefined. If in case of improper functionalities; product is returned back for completion of Software development else the product is allowed by the client to install fully in the organization. SOFTWARE LIFE CYCLE MODELS Putting a quick look on different models of software development life cycle would allow us to decide which model may suits best to our requirements for developing COL information System. Water Fall Model It's the simplest model for software development (SD). It has five general or basic steps of software development life cycle that includes requirement gathering, designing, implementation, testing and installation. Its advantages are that its simple and all software with simple requirements can easily be designed through. However, its biggest disadvantage is that if while implementation a requirement is likely to be needed cannot be added to the signed requirement document. As going back in this life cycle has no chance. Prototyping Model This is the best fit and simple model suits most of the web designing and software that emphasize on their front ends. This model has the same general five steps of development but its design phase and implementation phase splits in two and that is designing non-functional prototype and implementing functional prototype. Prototype can be functional or non functional. After analysis of the software a non-functional or functional prototype is developed for the client. The development of prototyping also depends upon the customer's will. When prototype is ready; it is shown to client in form of presentation. In case of approval, developers start their final implementation but sometimes they have to rework to produce better prototype. Its time taking but gives the perfect client satisfaction. Rapid Application Model This is the model of the same basic five steps but done with group of developers in different teams simultaneously. More briefly, it can be said that software is divided into different major features. Each feature is assigned to a team. They collect requirements, analyze them, finalize and document them, implement and test it. These all-major features at the end are combined together and send to testing. Product is then ready to install at client end. It produces the software rapidly but like waterfall model it can't add any other feature an unlike prototyping it can't be perfect at the end. Moreover, this development model requires more developers at the same time. Incremental Model Incremental model is same like waterfall model with a creative add on, i.e., it allows after testing to gather the requirement and follow all the processes again to enhance and make software standardized and more perfect. This model is easier to test and develop but rigid as it can't overlap any phase till testing of the implementation of defined requirement is once done. Moreover grasping the requirements in parts; some min functionality cannot be implemented perfectly or project requires reworking. REASONS FOR SOFTWARE BUGS Despite the fact whatever model may be used or experience developers work to implement the information system; bugs are always there. Having bugs in the code is not a problem as it raises the standard of the software as bugs are checked. But nevertheless bugs have some specific reasons. Miscommunication or no communication between stakeholders Software complexity Programming errors Changing requirements frequently by a confused client Time pressures Egos of managers or developers while working Poor documented code Inadequate Testing Choosing of wrong SDLC VERIFICATION AND VALIDATIONS These two words are commonly used while process of Quality Assurance. Verifications are the reviews done upon the requirement and functional documents however validations are error findings in the implementation with respect to the verified requirement documents. TEST PLANS & TEST CASES While the implementation developers in development section are holding work; Quality Assurance Engineers plan out in a written form how they will test the information system using what tools and technologies. This document is known as Test Plans. Test plans at the end hold Test Cases that are prepared with respect to requirement specification document and are marked at time of the validation of the software. REFERENCES Anonymous (n.d.) System Development Life Cycle. Development Procedures. Development and Acquisition. Document Guidelines (n.d.). Software Life Cycle: The Staged Delivery Model. Software Management. Marios Alexandro (2002-2007) System Development Life Cycle (SDLC). Province of British Columbia (July 9, 2004) SDLC Standards. System Development Life Cycle (SDLC) Overview. Ver 1.5 Raymond Lewallen (n.d.). The General Model: Software Development Life Cycle Model. Russel Kay (May 14, 2002). Quick Study: System Development Life cycle. StylusInc (n.d.). Software Development Life Cycle. Stylus Systems Pvt. Ltd. The Department of Justice (January, 2003) Systems Development Life Cycle Guidance Document. Information Resources Management. Read More