--Originally published at Hackerman's house

The Software Development Lyfe Cycle is a sequence of stages to develop a software product. Some of these stages are:

• Planning
• Analysis
• Design
• Building
• Testing
• Deployment
• Maintenance

The main point of Life Cycle is to detect errors in software creation before they are discovered later in the development of the project, this way you can save time and money, this also can improve the quality of the software.

There are many different lifecycle methodologies with different approaches.

Agile

The agile model is relatively new, but in the present is one of the main methodologies used by many software organizations. The agile model is used to satisfy the rapidly changing demands of the clients, being flexible and delivering faster. The projects are divided into short manageable segments, with shorter deadlines and more basic requirements, each segment follows the basic stages managed in short sprints.

Waterfall

The waterfall model is the oldest of the methodologies, it is very straightforward, you have a sequence of stages, when you finish one you move on to the next one, you don’t go back and every stage relies on what has been done before. This model is very rigid, which is why it has many cons, an early delay can carry huge loses, and the problems can’t be fixed until you get to the maintenance stage, this can be very expensive as one problem may have caused others in the way.

Other examples of SDLC methodologies

• Lean
• Spiral
• Iterative
• DevOps

References:

Arkasoftwares (w.d) Agile model software development lifecycle, Recovered from https://www.arkasoftwares.com/blog/agile-model-software-development-lifecycle/

Robert Half (2017) 6 basic sdlc methodologies: Which one is best?, Recovered from https://www.roberthalf.com/blog/salaries-and-skills/6-basic-sdlc-methodologies-which-one-is-best