Assignment title: Information
The software development life cycle, or SDLC, depicts process that all IT systems go through, to some degree, during their development. The SDLC literature varies in the number of phases it identifies-anywhere from four to eight phases. The overall activities and concepts, however, remain the same in each version of the life cycle. In this course, you will look at a four-phase life cycle: planning for the project (planning), determining how the system should function (analysis), deciding how the system will actually work (design), and the building and installation of the system (implementation). As a systems analyst, or SA, your primary focus is on the analysis and design phases; however, you must also be concerned with properly planning a project and making sure that your design is one that can be implemented. The SDLC phases are not only important in terms of the system's development, but they are also important to an organization's business activities as well. After all, the system is being developed in order to meet some need of the organization. Likewise, the system's development process should be informed by organizational goals throughout all its phases. For this Discussion, choose a type of business with which you are familiar. Briefly identify its operations and mission-critical functions. Which phase of the SDLC do you think is the most important phase to this business, and why? What would happen if the organization didn't do a good job in that phase? What would be the effects on the business resources of time, money, and people?