SDLC Flashcards
What is the SDLC?
The Software Development Lifecycle is a process for planning, creating, testing, and deploying an information system. The seven phases of SDLC include planning, analysis, design, development, testing, implementation, and maintenance.
Agile and Waterfall are both Software Development Lifecycle (SDLC) methodologies that have been widely adopted in the IT industry. The Waterfall framework was designed to enable a structured and deliberate process for developing high quality information systems within project scope. Agile is the structured series of stages that a product goes through as it moves from beginning to end. It contains six phases: concept, inception, iteration, release, maintenance, and retirement.
What is the difference between Waterfall and Agile?
Agile and Waterfall are two popular methods for organizing projects. Waterfall is a more traditional approach to project management, involving a linear flow. Agile, on the other hand, embraces an iterative process.
Waterfall is best for projects with concrete timelines and well-defined deliverables. Agile focuses on collaborative decision-making, customer satisfaction, and development over multiple short cycles or sprints, rather than a top-down process with a single series of stages.
What is Scrum?
One of the agile methodologies designed to guide teams in the iterative and incremental delivery of a product. This agile project management framework is focused on the use of an empirical process that allows teams to respond rapidly, efficiently, and effectively to change. Traditional project management methods fix requirements in an effort to control time and cost; Scrum on the other hand, fixes time and cost in an effort to control requirements. This is done using time boxes, collaborative ceremonies, a prioritized product backlog, and frequent feedback cycles.
Scrum Framework
The project begins with a clear vision provided by the business, and a set of product features in order of importance. These features are part of the product backlog, which is maintained by the customer or customer representative referred to as the Product Owner. A time box commonly referred to as an iteration or sprint, is the set amount of time that the team has to complete the features selected. Sprints are generally from one to four weeks in length, and that length is maintained throughout the life of the project so as to establish a cadence. The team selects items from the product backlog that it believes can be completed in the sprint, and creates a sprint backlog consisting of the features and tasks as part of the sprint-planning meeting.
Once the team has committed to a sprint backlog, the task work begins. During this time in the sprint, the team is protected from interruptions and allowed to focus on meeting the sprint goal. No changes to the sprint backlog are allowed; however, the product backlog can be changed in preparation for the next sprint.
During the sprint, the team checks in daily with each other in the form of a 15-minute meeting known as a scrum. The team stands in a circle and each member states what they did yesterday, what they plan to do today, and what is getting in their way.
At the end of the sprint, the team demos the work they have completed to the stakeholders and gathers feedback that will affect what they work on in the next sprint. They also hold a retrospective to learn how to improve. This meeting is critical, as its focus is on the three pillars of Scrum: transparency, inspection, and adaptation.
There are only three roles in Scrum: the ScrumMaster, the Product Owner, and the Team.
