The Software Development Life Cycle Essay

The incremental model is an intuitive approach to the waterfall model. Multiple development cycles take place here, making the life cycle a “multi-waterfall” cycle. Cycles are divided up into smaller, more easily managed iterations. Each iteration passes through the requirements, design, implementation and testing phases. A working version of software is produced during the first iteration, so you have working software early on during the software life cycle. Subsequent iterations build on the initial software produced during the first iteration.

Using the waterfall approach the system developers will be able to focus on one piece of the system and move on each part separately. This will give the design team more time to focus on small sections of the new coding. Moving from one stage to the next means that each step has been checked thoroughly and is completed.

The rigid methods employed by the Waterfall approach makes it easy to manage because the team cannot move onto the next stage if all of the

As noted by Williams in her article The Documentation of Quality Engineering: Applying Use Cases to Drive Change in Software Engineering Models, when the waterfall method is employed, an application will not be delivered to a client until all of its stages are “… complete, in order. First, one project phase must be completed before the next starts. Also, once it is finished, it and its documents are not to be revised” [1, p. 5]. This

This article by Phillip A. Laplante and Colin J. Neill of Penn State University explores the rumors of the demise of the waterfall model. The Waterfall process model progresses software products linearly from conception, through requirements, design, code, and test (Neill, 2004). The Waterfall method was developed in 1970 by Winston Royce when computer systems were monolithic, number-crunching entities with rudimentary front ends and users’ needs were filtered through the partisan minds of the computer illuminati building the systems (Neill, 2004). Most systems built in that time did not pay much attention to input from stakeholders, which is a good environment for the Waterfall method to work in – an environment where requirements seldom change after specification due to the fact that users are not involved in the development and therefore cannot provide feedback regarding incorrect assumptions or missing features (Neill, 2004).

Since the method was developed for manufacturing and construction projects, it made sense in these industries that a portion of the project was fixed and unchangeable after a phase completed. Imagine the construction of a road, you prep and lay down a foundation then eventually lay down the final asphalt or concrete layer. It wouldn’t make sense to build in the ability to go back and change the foundation after the top layer was set. Obviously, software engineering is very different and therefore requires a much different approach to development. Besides slow turnaround, there were many other criticisms of the waterfall method. Some included redesign, rework, and retesting due to lack of knowledge about requirements when a project began. Also, due to the extremely long lead and delivery times, requirements changed or projects were dropped altogether leaving a company with a half-built loss on the balance sheet. An industry average put the estimated time for any software project using the Waterfall approach at 3 years. This was the environment that enabled a few forward-thinking developers to meet and design a new and better approach.

The traditional development method requires the definition and documentation of a stable set of requirements at the beginning of the project. It was inherited by other projects mainly related to construction which focused on the completion of one phase of production before moving on to the next phase, for example, laying the foundations of a building first and then proceeding with the further stages (Bowes 2014). Similarly, in Waterfall, the requirement gathering and designing work is done upfront before any coding takes place. The basic notion behind the traditional development approaches is that the projects are comparatively less complex, linear and predictable with clearly defined system boundaries which makes it simple to plan and follow without having any room for changes (Spundak 2014). Moreover, traditional development method depicts the requirements document as he key piece of documentation. The gathering of all the requirements, getting a sign off from the customer and then starting with the development of the project gives the project a limit of

Finding out what will permit an organization to work optimally is the driving impetus behind almost any business or organizational theory. The Waterfall Method appears, at first glance, to be a lot like the Roman Civil Code: anticipate as many contingencies as possible, and then proceed to delineate how they will all be tackled. The problem, as the literature seems to note, is that there will always be things or exigencies that cannot be anticipated – which is why agile

But there are some disadvantages of waterfall methodology. One major disadvantage is that developers cannot go back to the previous step once they have completed the step. If the project requirements are not satisfied initially then there might be a chance of project failure. It might also cost budget issues as well as more duration to complete the project. If developers want to make certain changes in the code of project in between then they again need to start from the beginning to write the code.

Based on the first two points, we finally 'built by feature ' of the step time is relatively tight, and our customer contact is not frequent enough (only available face to face meeting at the first week Monday at each month, or connect by email), this make the iteration activity in the design by features and build by features become a luxury thing. This make our development process looks like a waterfall model more

can stand alone as the sole development strategy. Verner and Cerpa (1997) observed a relationship between the size of a department and the preference to utilize a prototype. They also discovered many of the aspects of a waterfall approach that made it widely used still hold true. Developer communication and project control have long been seen as positive characteristics of the waterfall approach. The increased control is the result of the rigid, phased structure that defines a waterfall development plan. A drawback to this development strategy is the lack of feedback that we see in the scrum or agile method. This lack of feedback makes having a complete requirements essential, the lack of which can mean an unsuccessful or scrapped project.

The Waterfall Methodology no longer works well in the complex development cycles for more robust applications that need to be phased development with regression testing along the way to make sure code updates did not break earlier code already tested and signed off as golden. (Holler et al., 2014, para. 5).

In this article we are going to discuss the software development life-cycles. But first lets break down the software development part and the life-cycle part.

The waterfall model consists of five phases such as requirements, Design, implementation, verification and maintenance. The method is a sequential design process where progress is seen as flowing downwards in a steadily manner, each development phase has its own distinct goals. The model is similar to water flowing down a cliff it can only flow in one way and cannot go back up it is the same with waterfall development ,after a development phase is completed it proceeds to the next development phase you cannot go back.

‘Feasibility’ is the stage coming after, it is when the clients establish their objectives and review options that help accomplish them. This stage may take up to 9 months (National Research Council staff et al., 2000). A large scope of change of design information may involve