Importance of Software Development Life Cycle For Predictable Projects
Tags: webdev, software, beginners, programming
Published: 2023-03-14 10:28:47

You are all set to hand over your project to the best custom software development company from the ones you shortlisted. But are you sure your requirements will be perfectly met, you’ll get regular updates on the work done, and the software development project will wind up on time? Is there a way you can ascertain if the development team you chose has all the tasks streamlined and the process under control? Well, that’s where the software development lifecycle (SDLC) plays its role.

In this blog, we’ll tell you the importance of the software development lifecycle, its phases, and why it’s essential to choose the right methodology.

## Importance of Software Development Life Cycle

The software development life cycle (SDLC) defines the series of steps that a development team should follow for building and maintaining a software product. It starts with the decision to develop software and ends when the software is secure against all threats and exploitations. SDLC has several phases. It is actually a roadmap of the software development process which explains everything precisely.

**But why is the software development life cycle important for you?**

Software development processes are complex. Even when project managers try their best to meet deadlines, there’s enough probability of poor planning, rushed decisions, and deadline breaches. However, you don’t want any of these. The software development life cycle outlines all the events and actions in the software development process. Stakeholders, especially developers, have an understanding of what they should do next. Thus an SDLC allows businesses to experience the bliss of predictable software development.

**Some other key benefits of a software development life cycle include:**

Provides visibility to all the parties concerned about the software development project
Business owners gain more control over the project
It ensures predictable and on-time deliveries of tasks and objectives throughout the process
There’s less possibility of exceeding budget and deadlines
It ensures that all goals and expectations are met at the end of the software development process
An SDLC is one of the only ways to ensure that all demands and necessities of business owners and end users are fulfilled. It’s the outline of how the desired software product will be achieved.


**But, how does a software development life cycle work?**

This is a frequently asked question to us as a **[custom software development company](https://www.narolainfotech.com/custom-software-development-company/)**. SDLC improves the quality of development and focuses on reducing the time it will take. This ultimately helps in lowering the overall cost. Since it requires following a specific plan, removing the typical pitfalls of the software project becomes easier while achieving divergent goals.

To get into the depth of how SDLC works, you must understand its different phases.

## Phases of Software Development Life Cycle

You may realize that the phases of SDLC are similar to the software development process. The former is an outline of the latter and states the goals to achieve, while the software development process is all about implementing the SDLC in 3D.

![Image description](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/xvzui4z6mvkcpqkqbwme.jpg)

### Phase 1- Ideation and Requirements Gathering

Once this is done, the project owners outline the scope of the project, followed by the resources required, budget, deadlines, potential risks, and quality assurance practices. All these details are secure as formal documents which we call Software Requirement Specification. This document is, therefore, an important reference for project managers, business analysts, developers, and quality assurance teams.

### Phase 2- Designing

This phase transforms software development requirements into robust design. It’s time to finalize the high-level and below-level design elements of the software. The decisions regarding software architecture, its look and feel are all to be made during this phase. The designing phase may involve several design documents, coding guidelines, tools, frameworks, runtime, best practices, etc. Everything should align with the goals mentioned in the software requirements specification.

### Phase 3- Software Development

Front-end developers work on creating the interface and establishing its communication with the server. Further, the database administrators add other important details. There are various tools, frameworks, and coding guidelines that ensure you get a high-quality software product. At the end of this phase, stakeholders have the software and the Source Code Document. When you hire custom software developer, you can look for specializations based on the tools, frameworks, or languages that you want to use for your software.

### Phase 4- Testing

Once the software is ready, it’s time for a quality check. Just imagine you’ve got a new pair of pants stitched but the zipper doesn’t work or it doesn’t fit you well. In the same way, if the software fails to do what you expect from it, all efforts would be in vain. Thus quality assurance is an important aspect. When the developers complete their tasks, the Quality Assurance (QA) team measures the quality of the software by conducting various tests. 
A brief about them is given below:

Functional Testing
Performance Testing
Unit Testing:
Security Testing:
Usability Testing:
If any bugs are reported at this stage, the software developers would fix them, and the component will be tested again. Quality assurance is an ongoing process that continues till the software is completely free from bugs.

### Phase 5- Deployment and Maintenance

In this phase, the software product is released in the market for beta testing. The support team collects user feedback and makes necessary fixes accordingly. The deployed software requires continuous maintenance and strengthening with new feature sets, better functioning, etc.

### Most Popular SDLC Methodology

SDLC methodologies are basically, structured approaches to software development. It is a combination of production and design philosophies along with human activities to get better software outcomes. The most common SDLC methodologies are:

Agile
Waterfall
What is Agile Development?

Agile is one of the most popular SDLC methodologies used by software development teams. It’s even a part of university curriculums and programming boot camps. This methodology comes from the 12 principles of the Agile Manifesto. It focuses mainly on:

Satisfying the clients with early and continuous delivery
Better collaboration between business and technical teams
Creating an environment of growth for skilled individuals
Smooth and streamlined communication
Reviewing the team’s performance and making necessary iterations
Agile development lets teams empower engineering effectiveness and support better collaboration. It improves cross-functionality and gives more freedom in problem-solving. It achieves these goals by letting the teams define the tools and skill sets required to complete a project and then supporting them for the same.

**Custom Software Development With Narola Infotech**

At Narola Infotech, we understand the perks and follow agile development ourselves. We are thriving as a custom software development company New York, India, and on the East Coast of the USA over the last 17+ years. We are a team of 350+ skilled and motivated developers, designers, and quality analysts, who leave no stone unturned when it comes to satisfying clients with a reliable software product.

If you have any queries or software projects to discuss that you want to build/upgrade with us, feel free to connect.

**Source: Importance of [Software Development Life Cycle](https://www.narolainfotech.com/blogs/importance-of-software-development-life-cycle-for-predictable-projects/)**