Building applications has become an integral part of doing business. Each industry, from <\/span>healthcare<\/span><\/a> to <\/span>gaming<\/span><\/a>, requires a development team to build, manage, and test your organization\u2019s product offerings. For this reason, it\u2019s important to understand the ins and outs of the application development life cycle (ADLC), also referred to as the software development life cycle (SDLC). To help you understand this concept, we\u2019ll explain what the application development life cycle is and the six phases you should prepare for. We\u2019ll also review the different development models you can use.<\/span><\/p>\n The application development life cycle is the process of building software that incorporates user requirements while calculating the risks involved ahead of time. It includes all phases of the application development process, from gathering requirements to deployment, testing, and maintenance.<\/span><\/p>\n The application development life cycle plays a massive role in how your application provides value to its customers. Following a well-defined structure for building, testing, and releasing software builds confidence in the team and aids in a successful project outcome. Enforcing ADLC is not just the job of a product manager; it\u2019s important that each member of the application team understands and follows the life cycle with discipline.<\/span><\/p>\n Organizations typically follow a process to deliver applications on time. You should separate this process into the following phases.<\/span><\/p>\n The discovery phase is the most important phase of the life cycle because it sets the requirements for what to build. During this requirement-gathering phase, you collect user feedback, identify application shortcomings, and establish an action plan to address them. Product managers usually do most of the heavy lifting during this portion because this is where they gather important information about the software from stakeholders.<\/span><\/p>\n The design phase involves drafting solutions to problems found during the discovery phase. UX\/UI designers are the most active participants in this phase, working with the team to create potential solutions from a design perspective. They\u2019ll use mediums like blueprints, wireframes, and mockups to display these solutions and alert the team to potential blockers ahead of time.<\/span><\/p>\n At this point, the team should know what they need to do to improve user experience. During the development phase, the real fun begins. Software developers are the most active participants during this time because they\u2019re in charge of bringing the product requirements to fruition. It\u2019s important to note that the development team can be divided based on the app\u2019s architecture (monolith<\/a> vs. microservices<\/a>).<\/span><\/p>\n Once the development team builds the necessary features, the application is ready for testing. At this point, the team sets up one or more environments<\/a> to reflect the production version of the software so that they can test its functionality (either manually or by using automated integration testing pipelines).<\/span><\/p>\n QA professionals and security engineers are involved in this phase, with the singular goal of finding issues preventing the app from working as it should. Problems encountered during this phase, like bugs and security and compliance issues, are reported to the development team so they can address them. Because of limited time, the team will likely prioritize issues in order of severity and decide whether to fix some or all of them.<\/span><\/p>\n The QA team is usually the last line of defense because they decide whether certain features are ready for users.<\/span><\/p>\n Once the QA team vets the application for accuracy, the app is ready for customer use. This step usually involves bumping up the app version to reflect the latest release and sending updates to users that newer versions of the app are available for download.<\/span><\/p>\n You\u2019re not done yet, though! After releasing your app to the customer, it\u2019s still crucial to update and maintain it to address bugs, security vulnerabilities, compatibility fixes, and other issues that may arise. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Although most organizations go with the waterfall or agile approach, you can use many different models (or methodologies) to bring your application to life. Let\u2019s review some examples of those below.<\/span><\/p>\n The waterfall model is the most traditional and straightforward approach to building an application. The model has this name because you display the phases like a waterfall. With this model, you must follow each step sequentially and not overlap. The waterfall model is an excellent choice if the requirements are constant and don\u2019t change regularly.<\/span><\/p>\n Pros<\/b>:<\/span><\/p>\n Cons<\/b>:<\/span><\/p>\n The agile model is one of the most popular and widely used approaches to building applications. Agile methodology states that you should deliver a product\u2019s value in stages. Compared to the waterfall model, where each step is followed one by one without any overlap, the agile model encourages and expects phases to overlap.<\/span><\/p>\n Pros<\/b>:<\/span><\/p>\n Cons<\/b>:<\/span><\/p>\n The V-shaped model considers testing during each phase of application development. It resembles the waterfall method but includes corresponding testing stages as additional visual elements.<\/span><\/p>\n Pros<\/b>:<\/span><\/p>\n Cons<\/b>:<\/span><\/p>\n In an iterative model, the development team usually starts with vague requirements to build the initial version of the app and then improves upon it after each release.<\/span><\/p>\n Pros<\/b>:<\/span><\/p>\n Cons<\/b>:<\/span><\/p>\n The spiral model incorporates risk when delivering your application to customers and involves steps that quantify risk analysis, prototyping, experimentation, and evaluation.<\/span><\/p>\n Pros<\/b>:<\/span><\/p>\n Cons<\/b>:<\/span><\/p>\n Unlike the models mentioned above, the DevOps<\/a> model is relatively new in the industry. It emphasizes that software delivery is a joint effort between the Development (Dev) and IT Operations (Ops) teams. The ultimate goal is to improve the speed and quality of the final product.<\/span><\/p>\n Pros<\/b>:<\/span><\/p>\n Cons<\/b>:<\/span><\/p>\n The software development life cycle for AI applications looks different than the process for traditional software because it must consider the complexities of AI systems. Like the traditional life cycle, however, it involves the:<\/span><\/p>\n Unlike traditional software, AI applications require iterative updates due to evolving data and model behavior. Thus, lifecycle management is crucial for long-term success.<\/span><\/p>\n Although we\u2019ve provided a detailed overview of the application development life cycle, there are many other resources you can review to better understand related application development topics. We recommend exploring the following content and the FAQ section below to learn how Couchbase can guide your team through the software life cycle phases.<\/span><\/p>\n What is the software development life cycle?<\/b> The software development life cycle (SDLC) is a process that guides software development, from planning and design to implementation, testing, deployment, and maintenance. It ensures that software is built efficiently, meets user requirements, and remains reliable and scalable.<\/span><\/p>\n What are the 7 phases of the SDLC?<\/b> The seven phases of the SDLC are discovery (defining goals), analysis (gathering requirements), design (creating system architecture), development (coding the software), testing (identifying and fixing issues during QA), deployment (releasing the software), and maintenance (updating and optimizing for long-term performance).<\/span><\/p>\n Is SDLC waterfall or agile? <\/b>Depending on your project needs and requirements, SDLC can be implemented using different methodologies, including waterfall (a linear, sequential approach) and agile (an iterative, flexible approach).<\/span><\/p>\n What is the AI software development life cycle? <\/b>The AI software development life cycle (AI SDLC) includes the problem statement, data collection, preprocessing, model development, testing, deployment, and continuous monitoring to build AI-powered applications. Unlike traditional SDLC, AI SDLC is highly iterative, requiring ongoing model retraining and adaptation as data evolves.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" SUMMARY The application development life cycle (ADLC), also known as the software development life cycle (SDLC), consists of six phases: discovery, design, development, testing, release, and maintenance. Contributions from product managers, UX\/UI designers, and developers are required to ensure each […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":82066,"featured_media":14300,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1815],"tags":[9337,9808],"ppma_author":[9657],"class_list":["post-14299","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-best-practices-and-tutorials","tag-application-development","tag-life-cycle-models"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nWhat is the application development life cycle?<\/h2>\n
Importance of the application development life cycle<\/h2>\n
What are the six phases of the application development life cycle?<\/h2>\n
![\"The](\"https:\/\/www.couchbase.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/1\/2023\/04\/software-development-life-cycle-1024x517.png\")
<\/p>\nDiscovery phase<\/h3>\n
Design phase<\/h3>\n
Development phase<\/h3>\n
Quality assurance (QA) phase<\/h3>\n
Release phase<\/h3>\n
Maintenance phase<\/h3>\n
What are the six application development life cycle management models?<\/h2>\n
Waterfall model<\/h3>\n
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Agile model<\/h3>\n
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V-shaped model<\/h3>\n
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Iterative model<\/h3>\n
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Spiral model<\/h3>\n
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DevOps model<\/h3>\n
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Looking towards the future: The AI software development life cycle<\/span><\/h2>\n
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Next steps and resources<\/h2>\n
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FAQs<\/span><\/h2>\n