SDLC Policy & Procedure Consultancy

Software Development Life Cycle, in systems engineering and software engineering refers to the process of creating or altering systems, and the models and methodologies that people use to develop these systems. The concept generally refers to computer or information systems.

In software engineering the SDLC concept underpins many kinds of software development methodologies. These methodologies form the framework for planning and controlling the creation of an information system: the software development process.

At Dataworks, we apply the latest methodologies & processes to create the applications of tomorrow. Not only do we apply them to our own software development projects but we also share our experience with our customers to help them put their own procedures in place within their own IT teams.

The following case study describes a project for a customer is a fast growing public sector organisation where Datworks was asked to put such procedures in place.

SDLC Case Study

Most of the organisation's strategy / vision for the immediate future was going to be heavily reliant on IT as its main activity is to gather information and make it available to the EU Commission, the public and other third party stakeholders. The internal IT Staff were not going to be able to meet the demand so external resources were going to be required.

With this realisation the IT Management set out to define standards for all of their internal processes so that external contractors could be given strict guidelines. A secondary goal was to improve the efficiency of the internal team.

Dataworks staff set about interviewing Customer staff to discover what standards / practices were currently used. With the benefit of having developed a similar set of procedures for its own use, they created an initial draft set of procedures and compared this to the current practices while gathering feedback on the suitability of the new approach. Armed with this information the initial draft was modified and presented to the entire IT department. After further modifications based on this feedback the new set of procedures was adopted and piloted on the next project that was to commence. Obviously the pilot through up some improvements that could be made to the procedures and it was felt that future projects and changes in technology would also drive the need for further modification. To this end a feedback, authorisation and action loop was built into the process to insure never ending improvement.

The process is now being used for all projects managed by the IT Department. Although there were initial fears over the increase in documentation it has more than made up for this in the increase in quality, the ease with which new staff can be added to projects and the reduction in time for maintenance and modification of applications.

The process covers the entire life cycle from initiation, approval, initial specification, requirements analysis, prototyping, software design, development, testing, implementation and ongoing maintenance. The following diagram gives a detailed picture.