Life Cycle Models for Software Development

The life-cycle model is one of the key concepts of Software Engineering. A life cycle for a system generally consists of a series of stages regulated by a set of management decisions that confirm that the system is mature enough to leave one stage and enter another.

We will talk about two main types of Life Cycles.

1. The Product Life Cycle
2. The Software Life Cycle

1. The Product Life Cycle

The product life cycle is the pattern of stages that a new product or service goes through in its lifetime. Any product goes through a life cycle similar to living things. According to the product life cycle theory, products go through four defined stages: introduction, growth, maturity, and decline. Each product has a different curve on the graph for sales and time spent in each stage.

THE PRODUCT LIFE CYCLE

In the field of engineering, there are many sequences of stages that go through any product. In general, we can list these stages as follows:

              Concept and feasibility study 

 

                 Requirements definition

               High-level design

               Low-level design

                 Construct and test a prototype

               Manufacture

               Maintenance

                 Obsolescence and decommissioning

A life-cycle should be regarded as a conceptual model of the process of development and manufacturing, rather than a fixed sequence of events that must be followed. It is an abstraction of the real process, and is useful as a tool for reasoning, in order to plan, estimate resources, and measure progress.

The Benefits of Product Life Cycle

• Getting your products to market faster.
• Keeping your products competitive.
• Creating a centralized system that increases your response time.
• Improving product quality.
• Reducing staff downtime.
• Eliminating part shortages and disruptions.
• Improving communication between different offices and locations.
• Capturing any deviations.
• Lowering prototyping cost.
• Reducing waste.
• Enabling innovation and new features.
• Allowing you to determine how much a design change costs.
• Centralizing product information.
• Expediting packaging mockups.
• Lowering overall cost.