System Development Life Cycle free essay sample

Software systems development is, from a historical perspective, a very young profession. The first official programmer is probably Grace Hopper, working for the Navy in the mid-1940s. More realistically, commercial applications development did not really take off until the early 1960s. These initial efforts are marked by a craftsman-like approach based on what intuitively felt right. Unfortunately, too many programmers had poor intuition. By the late 1960s it had become apparent that a more disciplined approach was required. The software engineering techniques started coming into being. This finally brings us to the SDLC. What evolved from these early activities in improving rigor is an understanding of the scope and complexity of the total development process. It became clear that the process of creating systems required a system to do systems. This is the SDLC. It is the system used to build and maintain software systems. The System Development Life Cycle is the process of developing information systems through investigation, analysis, design, implementation, and maintenance. The team defines each of the required functionalities, features and operations. They provide detailed level information on the SDLC process, layouts of each screen, relevant business rules and standards, diagram process and DFD, pseudo-code and other related documentation. Step five is called implementation and is where the actual program code is written and developed. This work is divided and assigned to specific team members. Step six is called integration and testing. During this step the developers bring together of all the developed modules into one coherent system and test case studies for errors, interoperability and bugs. There are standard testing methods that are applied for this step. Step seven involves the operation of the SDLC product. The team imports the software package onto an end-user unit and runs the business target data sets. Step eight is the maintenance of the product to allow for system requirement adaptations, additions, movement of interplatform or other corrections that may be required. This last step lasts the life of the system. References Sinason, D. H. , Normand, C. J. (2006, Fall). Omni Furniture Company: A systems development life cycle case. Journal of Information Systems, 20(2), 81. Chapter 10. 3: Acquiring Information Systems and Applications, The Traditional Systems Development Life Cycle