
This article will explain how software Testing is a part of the Software Development Process. It should help new developers and freelancers to understand how an engineering team works.
Need for a Software Development Process
Software is developed to meet four main purposes:
- Custom software is designed to meet the needs of an individual client or business.
- Solve a real world problem
- Personal use (e.g. a pharmacist may need inventory management and billing software).
- Software engineering is a discipline that focuses on the application of the systematic engineering paradigm in the software development process.
- Agile, Waterfall Scrum, Kanban, and other software development approaches are available for effective project management.
The software development process is usually classified into:
- Backend Development
- Frontend Development
What is PDLC?
The Product Development Life Cycle (PDLC), is the entire process of developing and launching a new software product on the market.
The product development life cycle includes 5 steps.
- Product Conceptualization
- Product Architecture and Design
- Product Development
- Product Release
- Product Realization and Future Upgrades
Product Conceptualisation: Each product must start with an original idea. It may be a simple concept, such as modifying an existing product to create a new one.
It may even be something completely new. Innovation departments are a common feature of many leading tech companies. They focus on finding the next great thing.
A lot of effort is spent on market research, functional analysis, technical analysis, feasibility analysis, ROI, and prototype creation after the idea has been chosen.
Product Architecture and Design: Next, the technical architecture of the product is designed. The business team gives the technical teams the business specifications, and they then create the products architectural design, workflow diagrams, and DB design.
Product Development: During this phase, the development team begins to develop the product. Waterfall or Agile development methodologies can be used by product development teams to create a product.
Agile testing metrics are used by most software companies to speed up product development. In this phase teams create and execute unit tests, integration tests, performance tests, and other types of testing depending on the type of product.
After this phase, the team releases an Alpha version which is primarily for internal use and may only be available to a limited number of external users.
Product Release: After the team has received feedback and is confident in the functionality, usability and stability of the final product, they move to the Beta release stage.
Companies can choose to give beta access to all customers, or only to those who have requested it. During this phase, teams want to gather feedback from customers externally and make changes as necessary. After the team has made the necessary changes to the product and is satisfied with beta feedback, the product will be released publicly.
Public release includes PR, broad announcements and other methods to make an impact, depending on the product.
Product Realism and Future Upgrade: This phase is dedicated to monitoring the products usage and growth.
Teams must prioritize problem patches along with upcoming improvements based on the impact on customers.
What is SDLC?
The Software Development Life Cycle is a systematized approach that the software industry uses to develop and test high quality software.
SDLCs main goal is to create high software quality which meets or exceeds the customer expectations, and that reaches completion in time and within budget estimates.
SDLC is composed of the following activities:
Plan: The organizations best and most experienced software engineers are responsible for the most important aspect of software development, which is requirement analysis.
The scope document is created after gathering and analyzing the requirements of the client.
Design: Software Engineers analyze the Business Requirements to design solutions that meet them in the most efficient manner.
Implement: The software engineers begin writing code based on the requirements. A test is an important stage to find any bugs or errors in the software.
Each activity in the project has been documented to be used for future reference.
Deployment: Once the software has been approved for release, it is deployed.
Maintenance: After the product has been operational, this phase takes place. This phase involves modifying a few features slowly over a period of time.
In this phase, the system performance is also monitored, bugs are fixed, and adjustments are made.
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The Key Steps In Software Development

The software life cycle is divided into six main steps, which include:
1. Needs Identification
The process of identifying needs is the result of market research, brainstorming and analysis. To determine if a product is viable, a company must conduct extensive market research before building software.
Software developers must determine the features and services that the software will provide to ensure its target users get the most from it and find it useful.
This information can be obtained in several ways, such as feedback from existing and potential customers or surveys.
IT teams as well as other divisions of the company should also be discussing the products strengths, weaknesses, and opportunities.
The software development process can only begin if all the parameters necessary for success are met.
2. Requirement Analysis
The second phase of the software development cycle is requirement analysis. In this phase, stakeholders come to an agreement on the technical requirements and user specifications for the proposed product in order to reach its goals.
This phase includes a detailed description of each component, the scope of the software project, the developers tasks, and the automated testing parameters.
In the requirement analysis phase, developers, testers and project managers are involved. It is at this stage that programmers select the approach to software development, such as waterfall or V-model.
This stage is recorded in a Software Requirement Specification Document that teams can consult at any time during project implementation.
3. You can also Design Your Own
The third phase of software development is design. Architects and developers create advanced technical specifications to build the software.
Participants will discuss risk levels, team compositions, technologies applicable, time, budgets, project limitations, architectural design, and method.
The Design Specification Document specifies architectural design, components and communication. It also includes the front-end presentation of the product.
This step creates a template that developers and testers can use to reduce the likelihood of defects and delays.
4. Development and Implementation
Next, the parameters for the design are developed and implemented. The developers code according to the agreed-upon product specifications and requirements.
Front-end developers create interfaces and backends according to company guidelines and procedures, while database administrators enter relevant data into the database. They also review and test each others codes.
Once the code is completed, the software designers for hire will deploy the product into an environment during the implementation phase.
They can then test the performance of a pilot program.
5. Testing
Before delivering the software to users, testers check for bugs and verify its performance. In this phase, experts test the product to ensure that it meets the requirements outlined in the document.
If they are familiar with the software, or have a script that allows them to test the performance of each component of the software, testers will use exploratory tests.
The testers notify the developers about defects in code. The testers will continue the testing process until all bugs are eliminated and the software behaves as required.
6. Deployment & Maintenance
Developers can only deliver the software to the customer once it is free of defects. The IT software company will create a maintenance team after the production version of the software is released to handle any issues that clients may encounter.
If the issue is minor, maintenance can be done as a quick fix. However, if there are serious software problems that require an update, then maintenance should be performed.
Software Development Techniques
There are two main types of software development methods:
- Waterfall model
- Agile model
What does the Waterfall model mean?
The waterfall model is a linear, sequential approach to the development of software. In a waterfall model, the following steps are performed sequentially.
- Requirements: gather, analyze, and document
- Design: leading to the software architecture
- Code: development, testing, and integration software
- Testing: systematic discovery and debugging
- Operation: Installation, maintenance, and support of complete systems
Each of these steps is a stage in the actual Waterfall process. In fact, every stage ends before the next begins.
Each stage has a gate. For example, the customer must approve the design stage before it can begin.
What is Agile?

Agile methodology developed in the 1990s from lightweight software approaches. It was a reaction to project managers who disliked the rigid and linear waterfall method.
The incremental approach focuses on speed, flexibility, and continuous improvement.
Initially, developers start by designing simple projects and then develop small modules.
Working on these modules takes place in weekly or monthly sprints. Every sprint concludes with an evaluation of the project priorities and testing.
The waterfall model is completed in every sprint.
These sprints are a great way to explore bugs and incorporate customer feedback into the design.
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All companies need software development, but the costs are often skyrocketing. Determining the budget for these companies is difficult because they are trying to develop cutting-edge software that will drive growth.
It is therefore highly recommended to have regular communication with the software development team and obtain a budget estimate. It allows for unexpected expenses to be accounted for during the software development. Here are 10 other ways to minimize costs in the software development cycle.
You may wonder how to reduce or save on the cost of software development. The truth is, the final cost depends on many factors.
However, you can reduce it by following a thorough preparation and organizing the process. We will discuss 10 ways to stay within your budget.
Why is software expensive? Can it be made cheaper? You can save money, but be careful with your decisions. There are many risky methods that may allow you to make a small savings, but will cost you much more over time.
We want to prevent you from making a costly mistake when it comes to custom software development. So weve compiled ten ways that will help you save money and not compromise the quality of the final product.
1. Understanding Your Target Market Is An Important Step In The Development Of Your Product
The more you can capitalize labor costs in software development, the better. Understanding your target audience goes hand-in-hand with idea validation.
This is another step in reducing the cost of software development. Validating your startup idea by researching your target market is the best method to ensure that it is as promising as possible.
Use economic research methods that have been proven to work, such as the strengths, weaknesses and opportunities (SWOT) analysis, The Five Forces (number of competitors, new potential market entrants and their power), Design Thinking (the cognitive and strategic processes used to develop design concepts), and focus group surveys.
2. Specify Clear Requirements
You will have a better idea about what you need to do to solve the problems of your users. You need to then translate your requirements in the most clear way possible.
Research will help you communicate with your vendor in the beginning, and will also allow for an accurate estimation of the software development cost.
It will also enable you to choose the best technology for your solution. If you use a dedicated development team, clear project requirements will help your communication with developers. This is because less confusion will reduce the chances of misunderstandings or errors.
Estimating Software Development Projects
3. Take The Location Of The Vendor Into Account
The budget you have available may be significantly impacted by the location of your partner developer. While recruiting highly skilled programmers in America might cost up to $2000 per hour, the average cost of software development in the Far East can be as high as $15-20 per hour.
Your budget will be impacted by the tenfold difference in programming expenditures. It is preferable to strike a balance between price and quality.
Consider outsourcing to countries in Eastern Europe. Ukraine is a popular destination for staff augmentation and outsourcing, because it offers high-quality software development expertise at a reasonable price.
A difference in mentality, as well as overlapping business hours, allows you to organize your project more efficiently.
4. Adopt Agile
Agile is not a panacea nor a method to cut costs. Its an insurance policy against market changes. This method allows you to design your solution in a way that is flexible and always ready to change.
This method allows you to keep a finger on the pulse and adapt your strategy to the changing market. You can also create products that are in demand, even if the preferences of the target audience have changed.
5. Devops Implementation
DevOps can help you optimize your development budget for your application. DevOps is a key approach because it allows team members to interact better with each other, and customers.
It is important to share the responsibilities between the software development company, the team responsible for running the application and the team that develops the software.
This will help you avoid shifting the responsibilities of one team member onto another. DevOps is the consolidation of responsibilities in an intelligent way. DevOps is based on continuous integration and delivery (CI/CD).
Using this method, each module is integrated gradually into the business process to evaluate its effectiveness and receive feedback.
You can prevent a situation in which the application you create does not meet your goals and needs.
6. Avoid A Fixed Scheme And A Fixed Pricing
You can choose between two types of contract when you outsource your project to third-party vendors:
- Fixed price contract
- Time-and-materials (T&M) contract
It may appear that the first option is the best option, as it leaves no room for surprise. The parties will usually agree on all the essentials, such as the price, the time frame, and the expected result, in advance.
This work model is ideal for small projects which are developed in a waterfall-like manner, allowing both time and price to be more accurately estimated.
If the price of custom software development is fixed, it can be difficult to develop a large project that requires an Agile method.
The developers would try to stay within the budget but quality of the final product is likely to suffer. This approach also leaves no room for adaptations and changes, which is a key component of Agile. Fixed price models are only appropriate for projects that are simple and predictable.
Startups that are looking to find new solutions for user problems may want to choose a time and materials contract.
This allows the product to be developed from one phase to the next, allowing for additional funding during earlier stages of development, such as MVP and POC. It also enhances the quality of the product.
The most typical contracts are time and materials set price agreements.
7. Adopt Lean Process
Lean methodology includes advice on capitalizing software development costs. Lean developments core principle states that you should test and validate ideas before investing.
Lean is a method that includes market research, idea validation and target market research.
Lean is a methodology that can be used in any industry. It also works well with Agile when it is used correctly.
Agiles key principle is flexibility, while Leans key principles are intelligence and frugalness. These two methodologies provide excellent opportunities for adaptation and change, as long as each idea is thoroughly validated prior to a final implementation decision.
Read More: Learn the Essentials of Software Development in 2023
8. Launch Your Product With Essential-Only Features
The first working prototype for your solution will only contain key functions if you use the Lean method.
MVP is a key milestone of Lean as it allows for you to demonstrate your product in real-world environments, test it, and collect feedback.
You can then use this information to improve and further develop the product. This strategy allows you to get a true understanding of the market and evaluate the chances of launching an application with minimal investment in real time.
You can then avoid situations where an audience does not want a costly solution.
9. Consider A Semi-Custom Alternative
Costs for custom software development can be expensive, as your developers have to design and create every module from scratch.
It is possible to create something truly outstanding with this method, but if you have a limited budget, it may be necessary to consider other options.
Semi-custom software can be a good option if youre looking to maximize your software pricing while still creating a unique product.
Your software development team will need to be tech-savvy and smart, as your solution may be built partially using existing functionality in other apps.
A semi-custom solution is almost identical to a custom build if you know how to use it and when.
10. Prioritize Usability Over Visual Impact
Always keep usability at the forefront of your mind when looking for a design solution. Design and usability are inextricably linked, since the first impression is what motivates the user to explore the product further or to close the website or uninstall an application.
Your design solution should follow the latest trends and be user-friendly, from the first impression through the desired action.
It is not always necessary to create design elements from scratch. To reduce development costs, you can use pre-made pieces or a semi-custom method.
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Final Thoughts
As businesses continue to grow through compelling software development it is important that they adapt technologies and methodologies which reduce costs.
In addition, adopting best practices and cost-saving lean development measures helps evaluate the time and budget needed. These ten methods will help you not only minimize costs, but also ensure that a high-quality product is delivered at the best price and the shortest time possible.