Cards: System Development Lifecycle

What is the Systems Development Lifecycle (SDLC)?

The process of determining how a system can support business needs, designing the system, building it, and delivering it to users.

List the four main stages of the Systems Development Lifecycle (SDLC).

1. Planning 2. Analysis 3. Design 4. Implementation

What is the main purpose of the Planning stage in the SDLC?

Understanding why a system should be developed and creating a plan for how it will be developed and delivered.

What are the three types of feasibility analysis often involved in the Planning stage?

Technical feasibility, economic feasibility, and organizational feasibility.

What is included in a cost-benefit analysis during the Planning stage?

Development costs (one-time costs), operational costs (ongoing costs), tangible benefits (e.g., revenue), and intangible benefits (predicted benefits, that may be harder to quantify).

What are some key outputs of the Planning stage?

Goals for new system, definition of project’s scope, assessment of feasibility, and initial work plan.

What are the primary objectives of the Analysis stage?

Understanding who will use the system, what the system will do, and where/when it will be used. This involves understanding the existing situation, identifying improvements, and defining requirements.

What is problem analysis in the Analysis stage?

Breaking a whole into its parts to understand the parts’ functions and inter-relationships. It may involve rich pictures.

Why are "rich pictures" helpful in the Analysis stage?

They are a mental tool to understand a scenario , useful for discussing with other people (can cut across jargon) , helpful for identifying stakeholders , and suitable for any domain.

What are "requirements" in the context of system development?

Statements of what the system should do and characteristics the system should have.

What do the letters PACT stand for in the PACT questions framework for requirements gathering?

People , Activities , Context , Technology

What is the main purpose of the Design stage?

To determine the overall system architecture that will satisfy the system’s essential requirements, essentially deciding how to build it.

What does user interface design involve in the Design stage?

Defines how users will interact with the system and what kind of inputs and outputs the system accepts and produces. This includes navigation mechanisms, input mechanisms, and output mechanisms.

What are the key activities in the Implementation stage?

Actually building the system, testing the system, and creating a system construction, installation, and support plan (maintainability).

Name the four types of testing mentioned in the Implementation stage.

1. Unit testing 2. Integration testing 3. Acceptance testing 4. User testing

Describe the Waterfall development model.

A sequential approach to development where tasks progress one phase at a time (Planning, Analysis, Design, Implementation), with limited changes to requirements as the project goes on.

List two advantages and two disadvantages of the Waterfall development model.

Advantages: Requirements identified at the start; well suited to systems that have high security needs; clear deliverables; easy to arrange tasks.

Disadvantages: Time consuming; inflexible/not dynamic; no working software until late; doesn’t adjust to changing requirements; difficult to measure progress within stages; high overheads.

What is Rapid Application Development (RAD)?

An alternative approach to waterfall development. Examples include iterative development, system prototyping, throwaway prototyping, and Agile methods (e.g., XP, Scrum).

What are the core principles of the Agile approach?

Feature oriented not activity oriented; rapid development and delivery; work in small iterations; deliver in each iteration; review and adapt; make changes.

List two advantages and two disadvantages of Rapid Application Development (RAD) / Agile approaches.

Advantages: Cheaper and easier to make changes during process; flexible; requirements can change and be more adaptive; often useful when users struggle to articulate requirements; get user feedback earlier; quicker delivery of working software.

Disadvantages: Can be more challenging to integrate at the end; planning can be difficult; can be harder to manage; less control; can be difficult to scale for large systems; less documentat