Analyzing and Defining Technical Processes
Dan Sullivan · 2019
The purpose of this chapter is to describe technical processes with a focus on how they relate to business objectives. The software development lifecycle (SDLC) is a series of steps that software engineers follow to create, deploy, and maintain complicated software systems. Software development begins with requirements. There is some problem that needs to be solved. Some problems are relatively narrow and lend themselves to obvious solutions. For example, addressing a new business requirement, such as enabling the ordering of new types of products, is pretty straightforward. At this point, the focus is on the business or organizational problem that is to be solved. This requires a combination of domain knowledge about the problem area and software and systems knowledge to understand how to frame a solution. Domain knowledge is often provided by people with direct experience with the requirements. Once the scope of the problem is decided, you should consider options for solving the problem. There may be multiple ways to address a business need, from modifying an existing system to building a new service from scratch. A common question at this stage is, “Should the organization buy a software solution or build one?” Commercial off-the-shelf software (COTS) is a term that you may hear to describe existing software solutions.