IT Career Exploration

Product

What the company builds for its users. Most companies have multiple products. Sometimes you’ll hear developers talk about applications or features.

Functional Area

A group of people w/ the same activity or purpose.

Interface

What the user sees on the screen when they use software. A good portion of software code happens behind the scenes and controls what you actually see on the screen.

Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC)

The general phases for teams to follow for developing and releasing software. Each phase is characterized by a specific deliverable that should be developed by the end of the phase.

1.) ANALYSIS: This step is important in determining if the idea should even be developed. The team members work w/ customers or stakeholders to determine specific requirements.

2.) DESIGN: This phase includes breaking down the design into small chunks to be developed and writing code for each chunk. The result of this phase is an initial working code that meets the requirements identified in previous phases.

3.) TESTING: Plans are made to test the code that has been developed in a structured process during this phase. Any bugs, errors, or problems found during testing are addressed and then tested again. The result of this phase is verified code that’s ready to be released.

4.) DEPLOYMENT: During this phase, the system is put into production for the users or organizations to use, also called release.

5.) MAINTENANCE: This is a structured support process so reported bugs are fixed and requests for new features are evaluated and implemented. It includes measuring performance and verifying that the outcome the software was designed to achieve actually happened.