Summary

The Software Development Cycle is critical to the success of any software project. By properly performing the simple steps involved in this process, we can ensure the successful completion, on-time and on-budget, of our project.

Each iteration in the cycle can produce not only a useful result, but also an understanding of any disparity that exists between the real needs of the user community and the project being implemented. If it becomes necessary to change course at some stage in the project, the mass of work that will be affected is limited to whatever was done in previous cycles - not the whole project.

Most importantly, customers can exercise precise control over the process, especially during the Evaluation and Design phases. Any stakeholder or member of the user community can make suggestions which will be added to the task tracking system. These suggestions, called Enhancement Requests, will be prioritized by the Project Manager. The Lead Developer for the project can then determine how much the change will cost. During the Evaluation and Design phases of a SDC, the various Project Managers can decide if they want to include the enhancement work in the next cycle or not.

The same is also true for tasks that are planned: The Project Manager can delay or cancel them altogether as per the needs of the project. In all cases, the consequences of these actions can be determined prior to the start of the implementation phase so that the project manager is able to make the best possible use of the time allotted to the cycle.

FAQ

• Q. What's the difference between the last phase in the cycle, the Review, and the initial Evaluation phase?
  A. The review is typically a meeting with as many people as were involved in the previous cycle. In this meeting people talk about the experience they had during the cycle: What went well that they'd like to keep doing and what went wrong that they want to avoid in the future. The Evaluation phase is very different in the sense that decisions that change the course of the project are taken by management staff based on all available input.
  
  
• Q. My company has some steps in our Software Development Cycle that you don't list above. Why is that?
  A. This document lists the steps that BNT Solutions will follow for the vast majority of development projects. Some projects or industries might require additional steps to be added.

  If you look into a software engineering text book you will find lots and lots of steps that are not listed above. Often they are intended to deal with issues that are common to really huge projects. Academic text books list many issues that can be handled in many different ways by different development teams.

  The Software Development Cycle that you see documented above is the one that we actually practice at BNT Solutions. In fact, the documentation above comes out of documentation that was written as part of our ISO certification project.