Six Stages of Software Development

If you are new to the world of developing software, you need to understand the different stages of development.

While there are further subcategories, which you can explore in more detail once you have mastered the basics, there are six main stages of developing software: planning, designing, developing, testing, deploying, and launching.

Let us take a look at each of the steps in detail.

1. Planning

The first stage of any software development is planning.

Developers will gather relevant information and identify requirements, requests, and client expectations related to the software.

Specific activities could include creating specifications for the software, gathering documentation, and allocating resources.

As with any project, when a solid plan is put into place, teams will have the foresight and context required to deliver the right software.

2. Designing

Designing the software is the next stage.

That basically involves developers making decisions concerning the software’s architecture, which could include establishing coding guidelines, creating design documents, and determining the best tools, frameworks, runtimes, and practices to use.

3. Developing

During the software development stage, developers start building the software, based on the plans and designs put into place in the earlier stages.

Development teams will attempt to meet the goals set, often working in collaboration with tech leads and project managers.

4. Testing

Quality needs to be assured before the software can be launched, so any issues and bugs must be fixed.

To identify problems, testing of the software must be conducted. Testing ensures both the quality and the performance of the software is up to scratch.

Numerous specific tests should be carried out during this stage, including unit testing, end-to-end testing, performance integration, and bug testing.

Thankfully, testing becomes easy when you use codeless automation testing software. You can create automated tests without needing to write a single line of code. So, you can write test scripts to test your software regardless of what your skill level may be.

5. Deploying

The fifth key stage of software development is deployment.

After being planned, designed, developed, and tested, the software is deployed into an actual production environment.

That means it is shared with consumers and users via a provisional infrastructure within a cloud-based or on-premises provider to ensure there are no issues related to the deployment of the software.

The process involves reviewing, monitoring, and understanding things like infrastructure configurations, network settings, and performance.

So, when the software is in a market-ready condition, it is time to get the software into the hands of real-life customers. At this stage, it is imperative that teams are in place to provide customer support.

Even though the software has been carefully developed, customer issues are sure to arise. You need to handle those customer issues well.

Having access to customer issues concerning your software can also be beneficial for the development team because the team has access to real customer data. Developers can then identify customer issues better and make corrections to the software quickly.

Basically, the deployment stage is a beta launch phase that involves real-world customers. When issues are discovered, they can be quickly remedied before rolling out the main launch of the product.

6. Launching

Even after the main launch, teams should provide customer support and analyze customer issues to identify ways of tweaking the software to make improvements.

But overall, development teams can have peace of mind that their software is performing exactly how it should be and meeting quality expectations once it is launched, as long as developers and testers have performed the above stages of software development correctly.