There are many ways to develop an Information system, which is very complex. The systems development life cycle (SDLC) provides an overall efficient framework for managing the process of system development. Various organizations use information systems to support all kind of processes that a business needs to carry out its functions. There are different kind of information system and each has its own life, and system developer describe this idea as life cycle of system. During the life of an information system, it is first conceived as an idea; then it is designed, built, and deployed during a development project; and finally it is put into production and used to support the business. Projects during products phase can still be updated, modified through smaller projects. This entire process of building, deploying and updating the information system is called system development life cycle (SDLC).
There are two kinds of SDLCs approaches, one is predictive and another one is adaptive. A predictive approach which is organised and planned well in advance and new information can be developed according to the plan. While adaptive approach is when the exact requirement or user’s need are not known in advance. In this approach, some requirement of the system has be to determined after the initial development work. Generally projects have both the approaches. Predictive approaches are more traditional and were invented in 1970. Most of the adaptive approaches are created during 1990.
Predictive Approach
In this approach we first plan organize and schedule the project called project planning activities. Next is the gathering the business requirement which is understanding the business problem that need to be solved. This activity is called analysis activity. Now using the requirement that were defined in earlier phase, a new system is designed including the design structure and algorithm. This process is called design activity.
References: Till now I’ve been developing the software component using the Agile methodology. Agile methodology is adaptive approach. Our client was Credit Suisse and the project was “Know Your Customer”. It is to be used by the Relationship Manager of the bank. Initially we didn’t know the actual requirement and were given prototypes. Then after several iterations, after developing many prototypes and integrating all those we came to the actual solution.