History of SDLC
The progress in computer science in 1950s and 1960s, started an evolution which led to the production of a framework later developed into SDLC. Before 1950s, the progress wasn’t much in computing detailed approaches such as SDLC. The concept of structured programming only grew massively after 1950s only and the tactical development work processes became a huge demand in the market. This gave a start to SDLC, primarily.
What is SDLC?
SDLC stand for Software Development Life Cycle. It is basically a process that helps and enables the production of low-cost, yet high quality software in shortest amount of time. The end goal of any SDLC is to ensure that it the software that is developed in the end not only meets, but also exceeds a customer’s expectations. To ensure this, it has its own defined set of phases and stages with their own set deliverables. The main benefit of SDLC is minimized cost and risk with efficient and fast development. In simpler words, it is a project management model which helps in define the different stages of any project; from start to end.
Phases & Working of SDLC
With the access of internet to everyone it is important to understand that security breach risks also increase simultaneously. In order to avoid any type of data breaches within companies, it is important to build a secure system. This includes different phases a software goes through from building it, to testing to setting it up.
Phase 1: Planning
The initial phase begins with planning the different parts of the project. This involves collecting all the necessary information to move forward and develop the software. All of this information collected is later used to build the basis of the requirements of the project and helps infer the cost associated with it. All the expectations, what and what not, are clearly defined during this stage early on.
Phase 2: Coding
This second phase includes the coding and system design phase in an integrated development environment. All the different types of code review and code analysis statically are done in this phase.
Phase 3: Building
This phase includes the building of the software on the basis of the codes generated in the second phase.
Phase 4: Testing
The software previously created is evaluated in this phase by the testing team on different perimeters in order to check if it meets the requirements. These tests are done regularly to check how reliable it is.
Phase 5: Release
The fifth phase includes managing, deploying and packaging to set it in different environments.
Phase 6: Deploy
The software is properly released in the production environment in this phase.
Phase 7: Operate
The use of the designed software after being released into the production environment are looked into.
Phase 8: Monitor
Everything previously made software is evaluated on the basis of various elements. This includes the performance of the overall system, the user experience it provides, and the vulnerabilities the new system might be unprotected against along with errors and bugs in the system.
Methodologies of Software Development
The models which are most commonly used in terms of software development are as follows:
Waterfall
With it being the well-structured out of all the methodologies, the outcome of and moving to the next phase depends on the performance in the phase previous to it. It provides only tangible outcome at the end of each phase, but it does not work well in flexible work environments.
Agile
This methodology includes small, but meaningful changes on each phase moving forward and the product is tested at each reiteration. This particular methodology helps in identify and address smaller issues present in projects before they turn into bigger prominent issues.
Lean Software Development (LSD)
The aim of this methodology is to ensure that an efficient development culture is established and wasteful techniques are completely eliminated. This is to promote a better process flow. This includes the seven lean principles: build holistically, make decisions as late as possible, eliminate waste, empower your team, build integrity in, amplify learning and deliver as fast as possible.
Iterative Development
It focuses mainly on short term development cycles and incremental development. In this with each iteration, a new requirement is added at each step, which comes down to a final iteration with all the requirement sets.
Spiral
In this methodology, the development map is driven by the unique risk patterns of a project. Spiral methodology, sometimes, also depends on other methodologies, mainly DevOps and Agile.
V-Model Development
A V-shaped model is used to validate the purpose of different projects. In this the validation phases and verification phases are run parallel to each other and also associated with each other.
Establishing a Secure SDLC Life Cycle
It is important that robust security testing exists in this new complex and modern software age. Veracode can be integrated and replace the time the developers spend juggling different complex environments. It can be embedded and be a part of the entire software development lifecycle on each phase; from planning to monitoring.
Benefits of Software Development Lifecycle
There are various benefits from using SDLC model. Some of these are listed below:
- It improves the software quality which the organization delivers
- It lowers the software development cost
- By preventing after-the-fact fixes, it shortens the development timelines
- It provides a better understanding to cross-functional team of the resources and costs which are required to complete a project
- Provides an opportunity to the stakeholder to provide their input at primary stages to help with the development
As it is a requirement from the development team side to complete each phases before they move on to the next one. This ensures that there are no problems during the process flow. There is a major cost reduction and has a great impact on the quality of the final software product that is delivered to the market.
While the benefits are there, but so are the risks and drawbacks. With the software development lifecycle there is a reduction in collaborations and communications across different departments. Moreover, this process does not allow a lot of window to be flexible and even creates single point of failure in early stages.
With all of this being said, SDLC is one critical element in software development. Its framework allows the software developers to section different parts of the process to create a new product. With more opportunities for cross-team collaboration in different phases of SDLC, the development team can keep track of all points in different categories.