Thinking about creating your own software applications but not sure what are the basic steps of software development process? Software development is a complex process typically involving several phases. As a company that has been turning startups' boldest ideas into reality for over 5 years, we have prepared a guide that will tell you about the stages in the software development process for your project. What if we build a bridge between two cliffs, but the cliffs are moving? That is what the custom software development process looks like in our team: moving requirements, evolving technology, and unexpected challenges. Yet, you can find out that once the proper process is implemented, this movement becomes manageable, and chaos turns into something functional and beautiful.
This guide will represent the basic steps of the software development process, with the methodology from business analysis and planning to the realization and update of a fully functional app.
What is a Software Development Process
Still, the question remains the same: what is the software development process itself? Software development can be defined as the practice of designing, creating, and maintaining software systems through methodical procedures at different phases. Consider it as a roadmap that leads to your finished project. Here's a little breakdown of the terms for you:
Have you ever attempted to put together Lego construction without any guidance? Usually, such an assembly becomes an unreal task. The same happens with understanding the software development — read the instructions before proceeding. The software development process, also called SDP, is all about the steps and techniques we use to build qualitative software. It's all about the development approach, tricks, and gadgets used to make software development soft and more efficient.
The Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC) is a systematic way of developing reliable and cheap software in the shortest possible time within a provided life cycle. It starts from the idea to its final release and ongoing support. SDLC gives you a clear plan for making software, double-checking that everything is done in the right phases. That’s like placing Lego bricks, as everything starts from the instruction, basically, our SDLC serves like a plan. After that, it helps your Lego bricks become a full-built creature, therefore, your software project.
Why is the SDLC process so important? Here's one thing: app development can be complex. By sticking to established methodologies, we can prevent chaos within the growth strategy. SDLC methodologies provide a structure for:
To ensure you meet the needs, the SDP gathers clear requirements from stakeholders before writing code.
The SDLC can assist you in selecting the most appropriate methodology that aligns with the task requirements and extent.
By sticking to software development process standards, you can ensure your work meets industry norms for quality and security.
A well-defined SDLC process is the key ingredient for turning your future app into a bug-free reality, but what should you do for that?
Software development process steps
In our team, SDLC serves as a roadmap. However, we also use markers to have a smooth process of building software. These are the core activities of every company, and there may be variations depending on the chosen SDP methodology. If you stick to these stages of production, your team will have well-organized and effective work from the initial idea to a fully functional app.
Let’s get to these SDLC phases together and decide how to build this standard software development process.
Step 1 – Business Analysis and Planning
By the way, in the software development process, which is the task you should do first? As you may assume, the first phase of the software development process is the planning phase. It will help you to create a foundation for the entire project. We can easily compare this stage to planning your dream home. Risk management makes it easier for a particular project to address any unforeseen events that may likely slow down its progress or unnecessarily increase its costs. That’s the same solid base that is crucial for a strong and visually attractive application.
Here's how we can describe the software development process in brief:
Analysis planning makes you run a thorough research to learn all the stakeholders’ requirements. This includes completing all interviews and considering techniques to identify any potential issues and areas for improvement.
During the planning process, you must carefully collect the exact requirements and functionalities your job should have.
Planning software development process ensures that everyone in the team has a complete understanding of the project's progress.
The estimation process involves getting down to the basics by calculating the time and budget you need to complete the project successfully.
Step 2 – Requirements
Your basic crucial stage is completed, congratulations! Now it’s time to establish the groundwork for your plan. The next step is requirement analysis. This phase concentrates on recording your future functionalities.
To guarantee clear requirements, you may follow these key aspects:
To enhance the understanding of your project requirements, you can provide additional interviews, organize user workshops, and analysis of the existing systems.
The requirement specification document, also called an RSD serves as the source of information for project needs. Consider this document as the final plan for your future house.
Step 3 – Design and Prototyping
During the design phase, the designer takes the technical documentation and turns it into beautiful visuals and interactive models to see if they're easy to use. It's important to have a small-scale product design model of your application to see how it will work and make any necessary adjustments.
Here's the average software development design process:
As we have just told you, the design process involves the need to look at all the technical stuff, figure out how everything will fit together, how different parts will talk to each other, and what tools we'll need to make it happen.
Your concern here is to set the standards for UX and UI design. Now, we are talking about creating prototypes and wireframes to visualize the layout, navigation, and other aspects.
Also, during the rapid prototyping, you don't just rely on static mockups. You must design interactive prototypes that enable stakeholders and users to engage with the features.
Step 4 – Software Development
How do you think, in the software development process, which is the task you should do first? This is an extensive and time-consuming step:
You should look at the cool front end designs and layouts that have been created long before you built the site. Once you have a good grounding in the programming languages, it will be relatively easy to manage and modify the software architecture as the project grows.
During the write code stage, you must follow the instructions and plans you are given. Developers have different approaches, such as incremental development or working in short cycles, which make their projects successful.
Step 5 - Testing
In the testing software step, we make sure there are no bugs or errors that could cause problems for the users. You wouldn't like to receive negative reviews, would you? Think of the testing phase as the final inspection of your project, making sure everything is in order before you hit the big release button. You have to make sure your software development QA process is effective by implementing rigorous user acceptance testing procedures, continuously monitoring for issues, and regularly updating testing strategies to meet new challenges. The testing stage is like a treasure hunt, here we meticulously search for and fix bugs to have quality software.
Quality assurance may be very labor-intensive. In contrast, small builds are often adequate for manual testing or ad hoc testing. However, for larger systems, we would have to depend on testing quality assurance tools like TestLink or Selenium to assist us with repetitive tasks. It's like having an army of helpers who can try stuff for you - like moving to the cloud - and tell you whether it is a good idea or not. All the same, your application isn't tested only after it's released but iteratively during the development phase and when partial parts of functionality are ready.
Continuous testing means project team members enthusiastically check out each new build as that build is ready to go. This type of software testing utilizes automated tests that are hooked into the custom software development process that puts the software into action. It helps the software to be tried out in real-life scenarios much sooner, therefore making it a better design and reducing the chances of problems.
Defect tracking is a very crucial issue for both testing and development teams because it helps them measure the quality of their products and work on their improvement. With the help of automated development testing tools, a team can track the defects, and their size, and identify other problems that could be related. Third-party services like Bugsnag can be used for recording and prioritizing bugs
Evaluation and communication include reporting and analytics, which allow the development team to keep each other updated about the progress, goals, and test results. These fancy tools combine project data and show it all in a cool dashboard. It allows teams to easily see how well a project is doing and how the different parts of the project are working.
Last step: When the application is all ready and tested to perfection, it needs to be taken outside into the real world where people can actually make use of the application. A deployment process in software development means uploading the program to servers and ensuring there is a soft transition.
Step 6 – Integration and Release
You made it. The last and most important plan concludes with deployment. Think about the software development integration and release process like a farmer watering his tender plant. Here's how you can tackle this step:
During the deployment, you release the project to a production environment. Here we have two integration models that you can follow:
In horizontal integration, the communication is smoothened because all subsystems are coupled with just one interface. It offers this facility for easy addition or modification of subsystems. While costly initially, it becomes efficient as the system grows.
Vertical integration creates silos, which are fast and inexpensive initially but don't scale well, requiring additional silos for each function, thus reducing long-term efficiency.
The embedded software development process makes your creation accessible to the world. This can be a public unveiling or, otherwise, a targeted release to a specific user group on the market.
Step 7 – Supporting and Updates
Updates need to be frequent, and new problems need monitoring and dealing with while still young to make your app grow healthy and strong. We beg you to learn that real-world projects need ongoing care and attention. By following our prepared steps, you can ensure that your application runs smoothly and keeps its users happy.
The dev team keeps an eye on how the program is working and makes sure it's running smoothly. They will fix any bugs or glitches they come across.
Сhanges to your app should be driven by error detection, assessment of emerging industry trends, and competitive market. Valuable input can be derived from user feedback and intuition, decisions about concrete improvements must be based on real data and actual trend analysis. No matter what, Overcode keeps its customers connected, offering help and support even after the development is done.
Take a quick peek at these infographics to get a complete picture of the full software development process flow:
At Overcode, we will effortlessly turn your brilliant ideas into real applications. Whether you're into any kind of web development and apps for Android or iOS, it's all about bringing ideas to life. Additionally, we will enhance our engagement within project management, custom application development, including ERP, and outsourcing by up to 70%.
4 Common problems in the software development process
Various software development problems reflect the possibilities that can hinder the development process and affect the final product. Knowing how to solve them effectively is of great importance in order to achieve the best results. Overcode has been around for a long time, and we've learned a lot from working on big projects. Moreover, we analyze our own mistakes and learn from others to ensure our clients the best software development process. We want to share our knowledge and help you make your software even better. We make sure our clients get the best advice and results by following these helpful tips:
Interpersonal Misunderstandings. Poor communication or emotions in the software development process in modern teams create chaos and loss of coordination, resulting in misaligned goals and reduced productivity. As a result, misunderstandings lead to delays and affect the quality of deliverables. Clarity of communication and management of team emotions are the keys to avoiding these pitfalls. We believe in keeping our clients in the loop every step of the way so they feel involved and informed.
Scope creep. Too frequent changes or additions to a project's requirements - without updating embedded features or schedules - often lead to scope creep. Uncontrolled growth often distracts the project from its original goals and overwhelms a development team. Clear scope documentation and change control processes also provide effective management to maintain focus and deliverability. We take the time to collect and clarify what we need before starting a project to avoid any unexpected changes.
Rigid approaches. Rigid approaches involve clinging too tightly to a particular methodology or process that does not quite fit, and this can lead to inefficiency. This leads to frustration among team members and sub-optimal results. Moreover, it can start with the chosen methodology or accounting and finish with any kind of development process. There are also several more approaches you can take a look at them in our article about the top 5 methodologies. We usually go with a flexible model like agile, which can effortlessly change to fit different needs.
Insufficient testing: Poor testing will result in bugs and usability issues that negatively impact the experience of using the product. Poor pre-release testing often leads to the discovery of critical issues after launch. That's why, making sure you have the right software engineering strategy is super important. We always make sure to test our product extensively so that it is spotless and bug-free.
How to improve the software development process
We are dedicated to assisting any development company to improve the software development process. Here are some important lessons we learned from our journey to have this established build process in software development:
It’s obvious for us to divide projects into smaller, more painless parts and prioritize periodic feedback loops, creating an iterative software development process.
We incorporate a secure software development process with coding practices at every stage to reduce the possibility of vulnerabilities in your project.
Our skilled PM chooses the right software development process and methodology for the job. However, everything depends on your project's unique wishes.
We simplify tasks to create a single automotive software development process and adopt best practices for your custom software.
Our team uses a structured approach to managing evolving requirements, which helps to avoid issues related to different personality traits in the software development process. This results in smoother collaboration and less conflict personality traits in the software development process.
We always implement a clear change control process to manage evolving needs effectively. This minimizes disruption and ensures everyone stays aligned during the product development process, so you can get the best possible result.
At Overcode, we know how to improve processes in any project. That is why we analyze your workflow and propose a data-driven roadmap, which we then implement.
Example of software development process
Now, let’s talk about our latest collaboration with Embryonics. It is a company that strives to improve the success of In Vitro Fertilization (IVF) procedures. Their team wanted to make IVF better, and more accessible by using smart computer programs and artificial intelligence (AI). That’s impressive, as their method analyzes time-lapse embryo images to predict the chance of implantation, which can greatly affect the lives of many couples.
So, what did we do to deliver a fully functional new product MVP?
We have developed a plan in conjunction with Embryonics, based on their objectives, with the focused intent to make software development process management as effective as possible.
We decided to use Agile development with the latest technologies like React.js, Typescript, and Redux to make our project more efficient and scalable.
The application was designed according to HIPAA, ensuring that data security and all compliances match our development steps.
The web app was effortlessly linked to the AWS backend, providing efficient operations and data handling.
At Overcode, we emphasize the significance of various steps in the software development process. We always start from careful planning and analysis to rigorous testing and ensuring top quality. We follow flexible phases of the software development process, using Agile methods, which allows us to constantly gather feedback and create process automation. The expertise of our team members we have gained over the years makes our enterprise process strong and effective, turning ideas into successful outcomes.
Whether you're a small business seeking a major breakthrough or a well-established company facing intricate software challenges, we are your trustworthy partner. We can assure you that our team always listens to the project's needs and provides custom solutions to make your dreams a reality. Now, if you are ready to discuss the basic steps of the software development process for your project, get in touch with us. Start now!
