Agile SDLC (Software Development Life Cycle)

Prerequisite: Agile Development Models 

Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC) is a process of maintaining or building software applications/services/systems. Generally, it includes various levels from initial development plan and analysis to post-development software testing and evaluation. It also consists of the models and methodologies that development teams use to develop the software systems.

An information system is designed to perform a particular set of assignments. Frequently, this set of tasks that the system will perform offers well-defined results, which include complex computation and processing. It is a hard and boring job to govern the entire development process to ensure that the end-product comprises a high degree of integrity and strength, as well as user acceptance.  

Thus, a systematic development process that can point to the understanding of the scope and complication of the total development process is essential to achieve the characteristics of a successful system. Presently, two SDLC methods are used by most system developers. They are traditional development and agile development.  In this article we will discuss about Agile Software Development Cycle. So, let’s start exploring the topic.

AGILE Software Development :
Agile development is the idea of incremental and periodic development, in which the levels within a development life cycle are reviewed over again and again. It repeatedly improves software by using customers feedback to converge on the solutions.  

Instead of a single huge process model that is applied in the conventional SDLC, the development life cycle is divided into tiny parts, called increments or iterations.  

As in Agile SDLC a product is divided into small incremental builds, so in each build is provided in iterations by following the below process.

• Requirement
• Architecture and Design
• Development
• Test and Feedback

The major factors of agile include according to Agile Manifesto are following four:  

• Early customer involvement
• Iterative development
• Self-organizing teams
• Adaptation to change

Six methods are identified as agile development methods they are following :

• Crystal methodologies
• Dynamic software development method
• Feature-driven development
• Lean software development
• Scrum
• Extreme programming 

Software Development Life Cycle is a technique that shows the entire development process, which a software development organization must use to guarantee a successful software development.  

Rules to identify the desired SDLC :
There are some rules that the development crew could use to identify the desired SDLC. These include 

1. The size of the crew
2. Geographical situation
3. Size of Software
4. Complication of software
5. Types of projects
6. Business strategies
7. Engineering capability and others where it may be found suitable.

It is also crucial for the crew to study the differences, advantages, and disadvantages of each SDLC before rejecting the decision. An SDLC selection and adoption process are important in that it ensures the organization maximizes its chance for delivering its software successfully.

As we conclude that, agile SDLC excels in traditional SDLC. Agile SDLC also has its disadvantages, and also it is more suitable for small-medium project development. Therefore, the development crew must select an SDLC that best suits the project.