The Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC) is a process used by the software industry to design, develop, and test high-quality software. It is a methodology that involves dividing software development work into smaller, parallel, or sequential steps or sub-processes to improve design and/or product management. The goal of SDLC is to produce high-quality software that meets or exceeds customer expectations, reaches completion within time and cost estimates, and is delivered systematically. The SDLC process involves several stages, which may vary depending on the team and product, but most frameworks have the following stages in common:
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Planning & Analysis: This phase involves gathering business requirements from clients or stakeholders, evaluating the feasibility of creating the product, and identifying the needs of end-users.
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Design: In this phase, the software architecture is designed, and the software requirements specification document is created.
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Implementation: This phase involves the actual development of the software, where the programming code is generated as per the software design specification.
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Testing: In this phase, the software is tested to ensure that it meets the requirements and is free of bugs.
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Deployment: In this phase, the software is deployed to the production environment.
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Maintenance: In this phase, the software is maintained, and bugs are fixed, customer issues are resolved, and software changes are managed.
SDLC provides a well-structured flow of phases that help an organization to quickly produce high-quality software that is well-tested and ready for production use. The SDLC process has several benefits, including increased visibility of the development process for all stakeholders involved, efficient estimation, planning, and scheduling, improved risk management and cost estimation, systematic software delivery, and better customer satisfaction. By following some best practices, DevSecOps can be integrated into SDLC in various ways. Effective communication across the entire team is the most important best practice to implement into the SDLC process.
