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System Delivery Life Cycle

Many of The CTO Group Principals have been responsible for the development of commercial hardware and software products and for delivering IT business solutions. We have applied our experience and expertise to assist our clients to define or refine their internal System Delivery Life Cycle (SDLC). The genesis of our SDLC relates to some traditional models or methodologies that people have used to develop computer systems. Historically, software development life cycle models have been created around: waterfall, fountain, spiral, build and fix, rapid prototyping, incremental, and synchronize and stabilize.

The oldest model, that was originally regarded as “the SDLC” is the waterfall model: a sequence of stages in which the output of each stage becomes the input for the next. These stages generally follow the same basic steps but many different waterfall methodologies give the steps different names and the number of steps seems to vary from four to seven in most organizations.

There is not a definitive correct model, but The CTO Group has characterized our SDLC into four primary phases known as Plan, Build, Run and Retire. These phases are then broken into the following major steps:

• Initiation: To generate a high-level view of the intended project and determine the goals of the project. Funding is often mentioned/sought at this stage. This stage frequently includes the initial project planning and feasibility study.
• Requirements gathering: This phase gathers the functional and non-functional requirements attempting to engage users so that definite requirements can be defined.
• Architecture: This phase establishes the overall structure of the capability to be delivered providing different views of the components and how they relate logically to each other and the environment they will utilize.
• Detail design: Functions and operations are described in detail, including screen layouts, business rules, process diagrams and other documentation. The output of this phase will often be the technical specification.
• Build Solution: The program code is written in this phase and the various components of the system are gathered including outside products.
• Testing: The code is tested at various levels. Unit, system and user acceptance testing are often performed.
• Installation, Implementation and Deployment: This is the last phase of the development portion of the project, where the software is put into production and is used by the actual business personnel.
• Maintenance: The life of the system which includes changes and enhancements.
• Removal: This phase is also frequently referred to as decommissioning or sunset of the system. This is very important but frequently poorly executed. Organizations tend to look forward and this phase clearly looks backward, but decommissioning frees up resources and provides flexibility in the environment.

The clients that have used our Systems Delivery Life Cycle have realized the benefits of having IT aligned with business requirements to develop project, technology and financial plans that enable projects to be “delivered as promised”. That means on-time and within budget without compromising business or IT capability or quality.