The Importance of SDLC in Modern Software Development

Before we begin writing any code for a software project we need to take a step back and understand the entire process. This process is known as the software development life cycle which is used to maintain software. The entire process contains several phases which are: plan, design, build, test, and maintenance.

There are many types of software development life cycle approaches but the two most popular ones are waterfall and agile methodology. Waterfall looks a lot like a staircase, we finish one step first and then we move on to the next. Agile methodology is similar to an infinite loop, we continuously loop back through each step.

There are some advantages and disadvantages to these two approaches. Usually, waterfall projects are a bit cheaper to complete but you must be certain about your requirements before you move on to the next step. For e.g. if you finished your business requirements and you start on the designing phase, you cannot go back and change anything in the requirements. You are locked in once you agree. Agile methodology differs because you can continuously keep working on the project. If something needs to be changed halfway through the process, it can be done. But within this type of environment, we prioritize our tasks based on how important it is. If something cannot be done by the deadline then the task is usually dropped. Whereas in a waterfall environment, you must complete all tasks within a given timeframe.

The beginning of this process is the planning phase which starts off with a business analyst (BA). The role of the business analyst is to sit down with the client and go over the requirements of the application, in-depth, this is typically known as business requirements. The business analyst usually breaks the project down into 3 parts: the high-level purpose of the application, functional requirements, and non-functional requirements. The high-level purpose of the application is the overall goals and objectives the application is intended to achieve. Functional requirements are basically what type of functionality the application should have and do. Nonfunctional requirements pertain to the system of the application, in terms of performance, how fast the application takes to load or process a task, how much storage is needed, security features and etc.

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