SDLC stands for Software Development Life Cycle – a structured approach to the development workflow with continuous product improvement in mind. SDLC determines a course of action thorough the whole development process by checking goals and expected deliverables against the progression achieved at each stage of creating a product.
With a structured plan, developers understand what they’re supposed to build, project managers have the measures of progress, and the client obtains a way to compare the result with what was requested.
QA specialists follow the Software Testing Life Cycle (STLC) when designing and executing test cases in the same manner as the IT team goes through SDLC stages. STLC begins with analyzing the requirement, followed by test planning, test case development, environment setup, and test execution.