Life Cycle Management

Software is a set of programs that performs certain calculations and gives the required result. Software as a whole allows some applications to work on your computer. For example, software for maintaining the admission process in a school will go through various stages of analysis, planning, design, implementation, testing and maintenance of the admission procedure.

The stages of development of a particular product are actually a part of the life cycle of a product. A Software Life Cycle (SLC) depicts the stages of development of the software, from its incubation to its retirement from the system. It enables us to carefully study each and every stage of the software development, so that we can evaluate that stage and rectify any mistakes.

The analysis is the initial stage in the life cycle of the software. Here various feasibility issues, requirement issues, stability issues, and maintenance issue are analyzed.

The planning refers to properly structuring these pieces of information in the form of a well-laid plan. Planning also means how to accomplish the task of developing the product. Based on the studies of planning, the most efficient design plan is suggested. If the design covers all the bases for the functional working of the software project, it is implemented.

A system after having been implemented goes through tests at various stages. If the software clears all the stages of testing, it is marked designated for commercial release and steps are taken to create support infrastructure for maintaining it.

IEEE is a body that lays standards for the software process life cycle. These standards embody all of the activities necessary to develop a software system. IEEE has grouped the software lifecycle stages in to process groups, processes and activities.

Each process group is associated with designated processes which comprise the structural approach. These processes are grouped as:

Life Cycle Modeling, Project Management, Pre-development, Development, Post Development and Integral Process.

Life Cycle Modeling- In this process, a suitable model is selected for the software project.

Project Management- Under this process, the project is allocated various resources and a project environment is established. A plan is also laid down for project management. In this plan, the project is subject to monitoring where various risk factors for the project are considered. Issues related to quality of the software are also evaluated.

Pre-Development - This process conducts feasibility studies, analyzes the ideas and functionality. From this stage, system architecture is created.

Development - In this process, the requirements, designs and implementation strategies are broadly defined and classified.

Post-development- This process deals with installation, operation, maintenance and retirement issues.

Integral Processes - These processes take care of the verification and validation of the software, the software's configuration, documentation and training. Therefore, it is concluded that all the activities and development issues under software life cycle development should be covered under IEEE standards.

Contact Us | Privacy Policy |