<< Software Development Life Cycle | Optimized SDLC Timeline >>

Implementation and Unit Testing

Testing The testing phase covers the process of planning tests

that will be run on the application to examine its
functionality. The phase also describes how the test would
the execution of these tests. Decisions are made about using
a manual or automated approach and test cases are created
based on the chosen test strategy. During this phase, the
goal is to test the entire application to ensure that when all
the separate components that make up the application are
assembled, the application functions as described in the

requirements documents.

Maintenance On completion and release of an application, there

is often a need for corrective maintenance to handle defects
that were undiscovered in the development process, and
preventive maintenance to mitigate issues that might arise
from external threats. Additionally there is often a desire to
upgrade certain functionality for the application. For
deployed applications such as your bank's web application,
there is also a need to support to users and manage
configurations of the software system. The maintenance
cycle describes how this process should be handled.

From the above, you may notice that the SDLC process is
originally intended to be a linear process with one phase
completing before the commencement of the next. You must have
requirements before you know how to design your database
structure, and likewise you need this database structure to know
what tables and fields to reference in your programming code.

Figure 1.3: SDLC Timeline

Figure 1.3 shows the SDLC process implemented linearly.
However, as time is always a major factor in software
development with many companies seeking to reduce the timeto