What we are referring to when we talk about software life cycle? This expression denotes all the development phases that a software project goes through, from conception to maintenance.

Developing software is a complex and lengthy process that requires specific competences by developers. They often find themselves working in team to be able to complete their work according to the timetable agreed with the company.

There is talk of development team who must carefully plan and manage all phases of the project. Software lifecycle strategies are crucial to avoid delays, budget overruns or even failures.

Rely on experts of the sector is therefore essential to ensure that all steps are carried out as agreed. The ITS Software Developer Course for secure web applications is structured to train technical professionals able to follow the design and implementation phases of ICT applications in order to ensure IT security in companies.

Steps in the software life cycle

Most models of software life cycle imply the process decomposition into some common steps. Each step is closely related to the previous one, but the subdivision allows the development team to handle them separately and then merge each output, the result, into the final project.

The canonical steps in the life cycle are:

  • Requirements gathering and analysis;
  • Design;
  • Programming, Inspection and Debugging;
  • Testing;
  • Deployment;
  • Maintenance (ordinary and evolutionary).

Every project must start with the collection of requirementsthrough discussions between the customer and the developers, and by their analysis. The objective of this phase is to describe the context in which the development team will work and in which the final product will fit, highlighting the characteristics, requirements, logistical and cost constraints of the realisation. It is therefore a question of defining as accurately as possible the problem to be solved. The output of this phase is a document that collects all the characteristics of the environment called functional specification document.

We then move on to the designor design, where the essential components of the product structure are outlined, respecting the document drawn up in the previous phase. The figure in charge of this step is usually a analyst programmer. The objective is to define the solution to the problem posed by the client, and the operating instructions for realising it. The output is again a document outlining the outline structure of the project and the characteristics of each module.

The next stage is to programmingor coding, in which software is concretely realised by developers writing programmes. Given the increasing complexity of current languages, programming can be facilitated by the use of some ad hoc tools and the output is a first version of the software.

Before moving on to the next step, an inspection of the product is carried out, i.e. a review by other team members in order to highlight any defects and correct them in the debugging.

The software then moves on to the testing by testers who check its functioning and compliance with the requirements and specifications set out in the analysis.

If this stage does not reveal any further errors, you can move on to the deploymentprogramme release, installation on the operational platforms of use and deployment.

The last fundamental step in any software life cycle is the maintenance. This phase includes all the activities necessary to ensure that the product is always performing, correcting any errors as they occur, routine maintenance, and keeping its functions up to date, evolutionary maintenance.

Author of the article

ITS MOVE - Editor