What is Software Development?

Introduction to Software Development

The process of developing the software for various applications and for the maintenance of the system so that developer knows the lifecycle of the software from the business requirement to the maintenance of the software is called Software Development. Software development includes coding the software in any programming language, maintaining a database to keep the application intact and to store the working of the application, and managing the application or the software developed for its bugs. Software development helps in knowing the basic application well and performing the process accordingly.

Fig 1

Software Development Life Cycle

A Typical Software Development Life Cycle consists of the following stages −

1. Planning: Planning & Requirement analysis is the initial, vital, and fundamental stage in SDLC, which is performed by the senior members of the team with inputs taken from customers, sales department, domain experts, market surveys in the industry. This all information is then accumulated and used to plan the basic project approach, conduct a product feasibility study in all the ways from economical, operational till technical areas. The feasibility study opens many doors to implement the project; however, the approach is decided based on the highest quality factor with minimal risk.
2. Defining: Post Requirement analysis, defining & documenting the requirements in a lucid way is very important. Once that is done, those documented requirements need to get approved by either customers/market analysts. SRS (Software Requirement Specification) comes into the picture for doing this, which contains all the product requirements to be designed and developed during the project life cycle.
3. Designing: SRS is considered as the reference for product architects to come up with the best architecture for the product to be developed. Based on the requirements captured, more than one approach is proposed for product architecture. This all is documented in DDS (Design Document Specification). Then DDS gets reviewed and analyzed by important members/stakeholders based on various factors such as market risks, design modularity, budget constraints, time constraints, product robustness, best design approach, etc. The design approach carries all info about the architectural module of the product in the form of a data flow diagram. Internal or external, each minutest detail should be present in a design document.
4. Building: This is the stage where the actual development of the product starts, and the product is built. Referring to the data flow diagram in the design document, the programming code is generated. The clearer is designed to document; the more hassle-free is the code generation. Coders/Developers should follow the coding guidelines defined by their organization and programming tools like interpreters, compilers, debuggers, etc., to make the code more readable and lucid.
5. Testing: Testing is part of most of all stages in SDLC; hence we can say testing is a subset of all the stages. Testing is a stage where defects of the products are reported, tracked, fixed, and retested until the product reaches the defined quality standards as per SRS.
6. Deployment: When a product is tested completely and ready to be observed by the market, a formal release is done in the appropriate market by that organization. Deployment of a product can also happen in slots, by releasing it for limited users in the real-time business environment and testing the response end to end for that product (UAT, i.e. User acceptance testing). Based on product feedback from users, the required features are implemented and released as the newer version. Further maintenance is done for existing users.

Software Development Models

Below mentioned are the Software Development Life Cycle Models which are most popular among industries:

• Waterfall Model
• RAD Model
• Iterative Model
• Agile Model
• Spiral Model
• V-Model
• Big Bang Model

Waterfall Model

One of the Simplest software development models. As per this, all phases of SDLC work one after the other in a linear fashion.

Fig 2

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This model suits when developers are already aware of the design and have developed similar kinds of software in the past.

RAD Model

Rapid application development is an incremental model, where functions and components are developed in parallel.

The figure shown below shows the phases of this model.

Fig 3

https://www.researchgate.net/figure/

Iterative Model

The iterative model projects the project execution in a cyclic manner.

Fig 4

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The software is first built on a small scale with basic features. Then all steps are followed again by adding more and more features. Each iteration can be analyzed by the management team on the risk factor and then can be moved to the next iteration.

Spiral Model

This model is the fusion of two models – SDLC and Iterative model.

Fig 5

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All objective, constraint’s and risks are considered at the very first stage of this model, and then comes is the prototyping of the software.

V Model

This model overcomes the drawback of the waterfall model. As per the waterfall model, the next step is processed only when the present step gets executed, and there is no way to correct the mistake of the last step. V model takes this point into consideration and provides a way to test software at each stage in a reverse manner.

Fig 6

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All test plans and strategies are verified at each stage. Hence this model is also known as the “verification and validation model”.

Big Bang Model

This is a simple model, which requires a lot of funds and planning. This has been conceptualized around the big bang theory of the universe. Like big bang contains lots of galaxies, planets, stars. Same way, putting together lots of fund and programming ensure best software product.

The focus is always kept on programming and delivering the best product, with very less focus on planning and risk analysis.

Fig 7

https://www.tutorialride.com/

In short, software development is used by all organization to perform varieties of the task that can address and ease out work for people/fulfills requirements of the customer.

Recommended Articles

This has been a guide to what is Software Development. Here we discuss the life cycle of Software Development and its different phases, and also, with that, we discuss various models. You can also go through our other suggested articles-

1. Software Development and Web Development
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4. Careers in Software Developers