What is the software development process?

The software development process can be described as the process of planning and managing software development. This process involves analysis, planning, designing, developing, testing, deploying and maintaining software.

The real answer is not as simple as a list of keywords you will find in a diagram on google. There is much more to it that people do not take into account. For example poor planning or lack of proper analysis will cause every other aspect to stall and eventually fall apart leaving you with a failed project and in most cases an extreme financial loss.

For this reason we need to have a look at these points and find out how to ensure that the project software we are trying to make will be successfully built and launched to its users.

The software development process steps:

Analysis

I would like to say that analysis is the most important part of the software development process but the same could be said for planning so I will leave it as the most important part of understanding what you are trying to build.

If you are developing your software or you are working on a project for a client, this will be your chance to ask all the questions you need to ask. You will need to take this change to really  understand all the small complexities of the project you are trying to develop. Do not be afraid to ask for more clarity as this can help you and also provide the other members involved in the planning to think of new ways in solving the complexities of the project.

When analysing the project you are going to develop you have to ensure that the documentation is properly formulated and that every aspect of the project requirements are clearly stated.

The analysis phase can also be a good time to setup a prototype of the project to assist in the visualisation of the project as well as potentially highlighting shortfalls and undeveloped ideas.

Planning

The next phase of the software development process is the planning phase.  The development process required that you have a proper understanding of the goals, the objectives, the purpose and the approach that will be taken to achieve these.  You will also need to do a cost analysis to ensure that you have the resources you need to complete the project. You will need to plan out the project roadmap which will include the timeline, resource allocation and what your deliverables will be.

Design

Now we move on to the design phase of the software development process. This can be split into a few parts namely system design, software architecture design and user interface design.

System design

The system design will be a blueprint for your software. You will need to note the functional requirements of what your software needs to do and accomplish.  Then you need to design the non-functional requirements.   For example the security of the software. Lastly you will need to find any limitations that you will have. This could be technical or resource requirements.

Software architecture design

When designing the architecture you will need to examine which programming languages you will be using and which tools will be best to resolve the complexity of the project.

User interface design

The UI/UX design being the part of the software development process where you will design the look and feel of the software. This is where you will be able to ensure that the users experience you are trying to create will work and most importantly, leave a good impression on your user.

Development

The development phase of the process will be the longest phase. This is the phase where the project is built, and all the time spent planning and designing will be put to best use.During this phase teamwork and communication will be of the utmost importance to ensure that the development is straightforward but also that any factors that might cause a change to the software or the way it is developed is clearly communicated to all the required team members.

Testing

The testing phase of the project will be very crucial to the success of the software.  During the testing phase you will need to test the reliability, performance and security of the software.  Testing can and should be done using multiple techniques. You should do user testing to ensure that your users will be able to use the software and also to ensure that undesirable outcomes that are related to unexpected events and uses of the software is catered for.  Unit testing will also be important especially when the development time of a project spans months even years as development of new features or updates to old features could cause regression. This will cause your project timeline to be adjusted as you will need to assign resources to deal with the regression.

Deployment

The deployment phase could be a simple once off deployment of a versioned deployment where new versions with bug fixes and new feature deployments could take place. This will also be the part where a handover could be done to your client or an internal team that will handle from that point.

Maintenance

The last phase of the process is the maintenance phase which could contain bug fixing, updating and enhancing and performance monitoring.

A few thoughts

The software development process can be easily split into a few key phase but it is not always the case.  When researching the development process you will find a long list of different ways in which you can go about the development process and all of these will include colourful graphs that show a linear flow that you can follow but this is not always the case.  Analysis and planning can interlap as well as continual planning and continual analysis.  Many projects will have a combined design, development and testing phase where features are designed and developed before being tested. In the case where unit tests are used any bugs or regression that might occur will be caught early and improve your chances of having a successful project.

All of this will require that you have the proper communication systems setup and also a proper understanding of the project and the plan you have for it.  You will need to manage the potential risk of your project to avoid any unforeseen problems or scope creeps that might occur.

Conclusion

What we have discussed here is one of the more thought out methods to handle the software development process. Some other methods might only contain 4 phases or even more than the 7 outlined In this article.

The world of development is not always a clear cut way in which you can and should do things. You can be overwhelmed by the pure amount of information and contradicting opinions but the truth is that every project and every team is different. Some projects will require a more strict process to be followed and others will be more condensed or even face an overlap with many of the different phases.