Process of Sofware Development 1/2

The process of software development is one which it is absolutely vital that your software development team follow in order to enable you to deliver a quality software project. From the outside the software development life cycle looks simple enough, consisting of:

1.0 Requirements

You might have thought that requirements were merely something which were encompassed wtihin the role of a business analyst. In fact both software development and testing streams are also hugely involved in this phase as well.

Not so much in detailing the business requirements documentation, or Use Case definition but certainly in the software requirement specification (SRS) which are the more detailed requirements.

2.0 Planning

I bet you thought only project manager's knew how to write a project plan didn't you? Well you'll be surprised to know that often your Development and Test stream leads are more expert at using microsoft project than you are!

Yes a key part of these individual's responsibilities is planning the detailed activities of their stream. This is done by firstly analysing the scope of the project management requirements and highlighting any which are ambiguous or contradictory. At this stage the practicality of developing some of the functionality required will be analysed in greater detail. In the cold light of day it is surprising how much functionaltiy has to be discarded due to cost and time constraints.

3.0 Design

This is where the techie stuff really begins in the software development process. The software architect (or team lead if it is a small development) will start working on the High Level Design (HLD) and the Software Design Specifications (SDD's).

From these should be a number of deliverables which will be documented in the project quality plan as requiring formal approval and also being part of the review in the relevant End Stage Assessment

4.0 Development

I bet you were wondering where this had disappeared to. Well what you need to understand is that the entire project management life cycle involves a great deal of preparation work prior to each phase starting. Often this is something not taught in textbooks, but it is something you quickly learn about in the real world.

The development phase itself in the process of software development is one which usually involves a series of builds or drops into the testing stream. This will be planned by your development team lead to fit in with what makes sense for them to deliver, and usually involves the toughest functionality being delivered first.

Please click here for the remainder of the Process of Software Development Part 2

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