Software Engineering - Old Questions

1. What are the different phases in software development life cycle? Explain.

System development life cycle is a very important method to develop an informative system. System development life cycle consist of six step and involves different persons. A system development life cycle work as an iterative model. Any change that is required in the system at any stage, the system development life cycle provide this facility to move back at any step to meet the requirements of the user’s.

The steps of system development life cycle are as follow:

1. Preliminary investigation/system planning: Preliminary investigation is the first step of system development life cycle. In this step we interview the user. The preliminary investigation step involves to finds a user requirement and present problem in the current system. In this step we determine the resources or technologies, the cost of the software. If the proposed system is accepted by the user then next phase is started otherwise repeat this step again and again to meet the user requirement.

2. Requirement analysis: In this step, system analyst study the operation of the system and their relationship within an outside the system, and study that where improvement are required and how system work. Requirement specification document is produce in this step.

3. System design: In this step new system is design to meet the requirements of the user. The design of a new system depends on the requirements indentified in system analysis phase. System design defines the display of the system, the output of system.

4. Software development: Actual coding of the program is done in this step. The program is checked by using a dummy data. Documentation is prepared to explain certain procedure.

5. System testing and integration: Program is tested individually to check the develop program work according to the requirement. After individual testing the program module are integrated and then integrated module is tested to check whether system is work according to specification. The system is checked with actual data by real user’s, and the result of the process is examines to ensure that the result is correct or not. If result is not correct or not according to requirement then adjustment is made in the program.

6. System implementation: In this step, the develop system is install and hand over to the user, and system user's are trained to operate the system carefully.

7. System maintenance: Maintenance of the system depends upon on modification and enhancements of the system. Maintenance of the system means that the current system working is effective even if system environment such as hardware, software is modified. The current system must up- to- date regularly.