LivingSocial Hungry Academy Application Part 2

How the waterfall model of software development works

The waterfall software development lifecycle in the context of government contracts has on the whole six distinct phases after the contract has been won by or awarded to a company.  The first phase is the development of requirements; analysts from the company work directly with the client to outline and define the functionality of the piece of software that the client would like to use.  The next phase is the design of the project.  The software company's developers, analysts, and project managers work together to define the project’s scope of work and set out a timeline for implementation.  Normal contract progression is contingent upon the client formally approving to both the scope and timeline, either set forth in separate individual documents or in one overarching “design document”, which acts as a project guideline.  The third phase is the implementation of the project, where the code for the project is written and the software is actually created.  The fourth phase is generally defined as implementation and testing.  It can, however, simultaneously overlap with or cycle back to the prior development phase in that the reveal of bugs or misplaced functionality can result in the creation of additional code.  To mitigate against this, testing often occurs in multiple phases, beginning with unit testing of the smallest possible pieces of functional code to full systems testing of multiple levels or aspects of the software’s full functionality, as if being used by a client or end user.  The fifth phase is the actual deployment or installation of the software itself to the client machine, system, or physical plant.  The final phase is the maintenance and support of the software itself.  This in turn can evolve into the identification of new functional needs, and thus start the process anew with the development of new requirements.

What an amazing gist.