Software Development Life Cycle

This is for small projects where the customer's requirements are constantly evolving. In this case, the team would gather initial requirements and build a small prototype. This would serve as a starting point for further refinement based on feedback from the customer and would eventually evolve into the final product.

This is for large projects where the customer is relatively sure of what is needed and most requirements can be gathered upfront. The development team would fall into the standard cycle of requirements, definition, design, coding, testing and release. Changes in the requirements could trigger off a new software development life cycle all over again.

This is for very large and complex Projects / products where is it is technically or commercially not feasible to freeze all requirements upfront. In this case, the Development team goes through multiple cycles of requirements, design / development and integration with minor releases in between. A major release is scheduled at the end of these cycles. Requirements are expected to change at every cycle.

Irrespective of the development model followed, our team at 3K Infotech goes through the following stages. The deliverables at each stage are also described below:

This is a joint effort with both marketing and technical personnel involved. In the case of a product, studies regarding business and technical needs for the product, is carried out. In case of an outsourced project, an initial high-level requirements study is done. At the end of this phase, a 'Systems Objective' document is prepared which contains high-level requirements, the business plan, market studies etc. This is an internal document for the company.

This is where the senior technical members of the team get involved in writing a detailed 'System Requirements Specification'. The aim of this stage is to freeze the requirements and the scope, as far as possible, so that a genuine attempt at cost and effort estimation can be made. A detailed proposal is made to the customer or the financers of the project giving the cost and effort required. While this is the best stage to make the proposal, business requirements may force the team to make a proposal at the end of the concept development stage itself.The project manager with the technical lead will also create a detailed project plan outlining the project schedules, milestones, risks, project control mechanisms etc. Quality control requirements are also frozen at this stage. The customer is required to sign on the requirements and the project plan document to indicate agreement.

The technical lead along with some senior developers would prepare a detailed System Design documents describing the architecture of the proposed system with as detailed specifications as possible. The aim is to restrict design hange at every cycle.modifications to this stage rather than let it slip into coding where the cost of change is significantly higher. The design documents may be shown to the customer, if required.

The detailed specifications are then distributed among developers who translate it to code on the target platform. The developers are required to conform to given specifications and update the specifications with the help of the team leader if required. A test plan is also created for each program that will enable an independent test group to test the programs. All programs are unit tested by the developers themselves before code drop.

All individual modules, once completed, are integrated together and any defects are sorted out at this stage. The technical lead prepares a release document describing the state of the system; it's distribution, known defects etc. The customer is allowed to inspect the finished product and is required to sign on the release document as an indication of user acceptance.

3K Infotech may give free initial maintenance of the system as per the agreement. Beyond that, the customer would be required to enter into a maintenance contract with 3K Corporation. The technical support manager will document the process by which a customer can report a defect to the support team and can monitor the progress of its resolution.