Systems Development Lifecycle
How does Requirements Management fit into the SDLC?

I have seen many variations on what makes up a Systems Development Life Cycle.

One common approach is referred as the waterfall because each phase must complete before the next one begins. Generally it contains the following steps or phases:

• Analyze
• Design
• Build
• Test
• Deploy

Analyze - Here is where you define what the problem is, which areas of the business will be affected and who the stakeholders are that will be affected. These activities are that make up the biggest part of the Requirements Management work that we have been talking about.

The main output from this Systems Development Lifecycle step is the Business Requirements Document. You would also define the test scripts here.

Design – Here is where you figure out the details of how to make it happen. You already have a good idea of the solution from the Analysis Phase but know we have to provide more details.

The Functional Designs and Technical Designs are the deliverables created in this Systems Development Lifecycle step. They describe how the system will behave and what functions it will contain. They also describe what systems, tables and programs will be created or impacted.

Build - This is the actual task of creating the programs and database components for the new system.

The main deliverables in this Systems Development Lifecycle phase are the actual programs and any required documentation.

Test – This Systems Development Lifecycle step ensures that what was built was what was required and that it works properly with other systems running in the same environments. You will have to do various levels of testing including systems test, regression test and user acceptance test. This testing is supported by the test scripts that you created during the Definition phase.

The main output is a fully tested system ready for production.

Deploy - After the new system has been tested and everyone responsible accepts the new system, it is ready to be put into production. Deployment can include everything from making the new system available to the end users and distributing the new application with new desktops.

The main output from this Systems Development Lifecycle step is a productionalized application now being used by the users to perform their job functions more efficiently.

A project can consist of one of more of these phases and can be managed together or separately. There are various other forms of Systems Development Lifecycle methods which include overlapping of the different phases to provide faster and more accurately results. These have been referred to as Rapid Application Development or Extreme Programming.

The approach is an interactive development effort which collects some requirements, then produces something, refines until it is what the user wants, collects more requirements and starts over again. The premise is that the users can become more creative when they see results and time is not wasted looking at improperly defined requirements.

So, as I stated earlier, the majority of the Requirements Management activities occurs in the Definition phase of the Systems Development Lifecycle. However, once the requirements have been defined they must be used to drive the different phases.

Any changes to the requirements must be managed to ensure they are traced back to any other impacted modules as well as updating the test scripts. Requirements Management also plays a big part in the Testing phase ensuring that what is being tested is what was required.

Summary

There are 5 general phases in the Systems Development Lifecycle (SDLC). They are the 1) Analyze; 2) Design; 3) Build; 4) Test; and 5) Deploy. Most Requirements Management activities are performed during the Analyze Phase. The Requirements are also managed throughout all the other Phases. Testing ensures what was built is matches with the requirements.

Requirementing Steps