System development life cycle

System Development means is a process of creating or altering information systems. The system development cycle is a set of six activities which are closely related. After achieving a required percentage of completion, the activities go hand in hand. The System development life cycle (SDLC) method consists of the following activities :-

1. Preliminary Investigation: - Preliminary investigation is all about considering the organization’s nature, scope and objectives. What is the users’ requirement? What are the suggestions from employees, clients, management etc. what are the other alternative available for the solution.

2. Requirement Analysis: - After having a blue print of objectives it’s time to understand its detail functioning, short comings and chokepoints for determining the structure. This process is called as system requirement study or system analysis.

3. Design of the system: -   this activity evolves the methodology. The analysts design various procedures, reports, input, files and database structures. In short basic function of the system design is to provide descripttion of the task to be performed, accomplishing the same with layouts and flowcharts. This is called as JOB SPECIFICATION MANUAL or SYSTEM MANUAL.These specifications are passed on to the development team for program coding and testing.

4. Acquisition and development of software: - Now after clearing the phase of system analysis and designing, its time to procure those hardware and software which are best fit options. An organization may choose the option of buying or leasing the software from an outsider, which are specialized in their work or can use in-house development, for which the analyst have to work along with the programmer.

5. System testing: - A system is not reliable unless it’s not tested. So while testing, the users have to ensure the system are meeting the expectations and results are satisfactory or not. For testing, live data is used for processing.

6. Implementation and maintenance: - the organization must be ensured on this part that once a system is adopted, its updated and its maintenance not become haphazard. Maintenance can be further segregated into two ways :-

1. Scheduled maintenance can be planned in advance.
2. Rescue  maintenance which provide solutions for undetected malfunctions.

Sometimes it’s better to use pre written application packages if they promise rapid implementation, low risk, quality and cost.

Regards

Renu

(book :- Study mat isca)