Systems Development Life Cycles

The systems development life cycle (SDLC) is also known as the waterfall model. The systems development life cycle is a SDM (systems development methodology) that consists of seven phases. The seven phases are in a specific order that is completed phase by phase. The first phase is planning. The planning stage is where an outline is drawn up for preparations. During this phase a systems analyst, who may work for the company or be an outside consultant, will outline a proposed system, develop a budget, and create a detailed development schedule. To help make the decision, the company will perform four types of feasibility analyses: (1) technical, (2) economic, (3) operational, and (4) schedule. The second phase of the waterfall model is system analysis. The systems analysis phase follows the planning phase. In this phase a systems analyst would work with a company to understand the problem fully and detail the requirements of an information systems solution. This phase uses many tools and techniques, including requirements gathering, structured analysis, and computer-aided systems engineering (CASE) tools. The goal of requirements gathering is to gain a complete and detailed understanding of a company’s problem and how the proposed system will solve it. The third phase is the system design phase. The goal of this phase is to describe in detail how the team will build the new system—that is, what specific functions it should have and what parts it should contain. The fourth phase in this model is the development phase. Now that the company knows the design they can begin building. If they decide to purchase a new system, they still have to meet the design specifications. The next phase is the testing phase which is the fifth phase. Before a company can run a system, it must test it to ensure that it functions correctly. There is a series of test that must be completed to ensure that it functions correctly. The sixth phase is the implementation phase. Once a team