The system development life-cycle

The System Development Life Cycle (SDLC) refers to the stages involved in creating an IT-system. This takes place from the moment it is first suggested, to its delivery to the customer. The SDLC is essential in ensuring an appropriate system is developed, and that it meets the clients needs in terms of features, usability, cost, and time and avoids being one of the many projects which fail.

Projects are divided into phases to identify smaller chunks that are more manageable in terms of time, cost and specification. These phases do the following:

• Provide checkpoints and review points

• To encourage rolling wave planning

• Improve accuracy of estimating

• Focus on the right work at the right time in the right order

A typical project lifecycle to develop a computer system might comprise of the following phases

Note that this is a "Typical" lifecycle many organisations will use different phases depending on their specialisation.

Exercise - System Development Lifecycle

Resource: SDLC - St.Julian's School - Portugal (Google doc)

System Development Life Cycle Comparison

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When you haven't done any Systems analysis or worked in the development of computer systems before, the Systems Development Lifecycle can seem very complicated. To help you understand the process lets compare the development lifecycle to a real world example, in this case building a house.

Assignment - Compare the System Development Life cycle to one of the following and present your work in the form of a table as shown above or an animation:

1. Building a customised PC for someone else (Johnnie)

2. Building a website for a customer (Katriina & Ludovica)

3. Buying and customising a car for a customer (Samuel)

4. Planning and going on a road trip round America (Elliot & Victoria)