Oct 10 2008
Websites Are Houses Too - Part 2
Continued from Websites are houses too - Part 1
Last week, I talked about a classic recurring dilemma among IT, and especially web development - that is a perception that making websites is somehow easier and less critical than, say, building houses. When a house is getting build, tonnes of time is spent planning and organising it - but with websites, time spent doing that is often perceived as a waste, and the “just get it done” mentality prevails.
There is a solution for the dilemma faces in part 1, and that is a little something called the Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC). There are many difference processes available for handling a project, and the best should be chosen based on the team, the size and nature of the project, time constraints and experience. A few of the more popular ones are Waterfall, Agile and Iterative (Spiral). I will go into a little bit more detail about the waterfall model, as it is what we use to manage our clients’ requirements.
The waterfall model splits development up into a handful of phases - It basically boils down to Requirements, Design, Implementation, Testing, Maintenance. The idea of the model is to specify as much as possible in an early phase, signing it off, before moving down to the next phase. Any irregularities that are found in a lower phase should be passed up to the earlier phase before continuing.
