Chapter 17, Problem 1OC

Program Plan Intro

Systems development life cycle (SDLC):

• The seven phases in SDLC includes:
  • Planning phase:
    • The planning phase includes creating a goal statement for project.
    • It defines a high level plan for intended project.
    • It sets the scope of project.
    • The project plan denotes a formal, approved document that would manage and control entire project.
    • A project manager creates a project plan and ensures that project finishes within given deadline and budget.
  • Analysis Phase:
    • In analysis phase the firm would analyze business requirements.
    • It refines goals of project into defined operations and functions of intended systems.
    • The business requirements denote specific business requests made by system so as to successfully complete project.
    • The requirements management denotes process of managing changes to requirements in business.
    • A requirements definition document would prioritize all business requirements based on importance order.
  • Design phase:
    • The design phase creates description for system features and operations.
    • It includes following items:
      • Screen layout
      • Business rules
      • Process diagrams
      • Pseudo code
    • The graphical user interface (GUI) denotes an information system interface.
  • Development phase:
    • The development phase transforms detailed design documents into actual system.
    • During this phase, the team defines programming language for development.
    • A scripting language may provide interactive modules to website.
    • Object oriented languages may group data into objects.
  • Testing phase:
    • The testing phase keeps all project modules under testing environment for elimination of bugs and errors.
    • It verifies that system meets all requirements mentioned in analysis phase.
    • Bugs denote defects in information system code.
    • The test conditions denote steps that must be performed and expected result for each step.
  • Implementation phase:
    • The system is placed into production, detailed documentation is performed.
    • The users begin actual operations in business within system.
  • Maintenance phase:
    • The organization performs corrections, changes and up gradations to ensure that system meets requirements.
    • Corrective maintenance would make system changes to flaws in design, errors in coding or issues in implementation.
    • Preventive maintenance would make system changes to reduce chances for system failure in future.  

Explanation of Solution

Most critical Phase:

• All phases in SDLC are likewise important. No phase can be skipped.
• If any phase is been skipped, then it might result in software failure and defects.
• Hence, there is no such phase which could be stated as most critical phase.