System Development Life Cycle Methodologies.

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The System Development Life Cycle (SDLC) is a process for designing, implementing and maintaining a system. The purpose of the System Development Life Cycle is to consistently produce software that meets or exceeds customer expectations, on time and on budget. The System Development Life Cycle was developed in the 1960s, in response to the need to produce large scale business systems (Elliott & Strachan & Radford, 2004). Prior to this point, applications were typically developed by a single programmer or group of developers in response to a perceived need or requirement. Oftentimes, programmers worked without the benefit of user input, resulting in software that of inconsistent quality, over budget and difficult to maintain.

The System Development Life Cycle consists of basically 5 steps, performed in a cyclical manner.

1. Planning-In the planning phase requirements are gathered and a high level view of the project is developed.
2. Analysis-The End user requirements are analyzed and a detailed description of the desired functions is created.
3. Design-The features and operations of the system are laid out in detail. This may include screen layout, rules and process diagrams. The pseudo code and other documentation are developed during this phase as well.
4. Implementation-The functional code is written, tested and the system is deployed.
5. Maintenance-This phase encompasses the remainder of the systems lifecycle as it is changed, corrected and updated. This process may also involve a repeat of the SDLC in miniature as upgrades are developed or as a new replacement system is created.

Since its inception, many different System Development Methodologies have been developed. Each methodology covers the same basic steps of the SLDC but uses different processes to accomplish its goals. Each methodology is appropriate ...