Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC) – Requierment Gathering

Can you articulate Software Design Life Cycle (SDLC) to your child?

 

The answer to above question is yes if you have a metaphor, simple enough and easy to understand I often get asked what is Software Design Life Cycle (SDLC) and what exactly we do in this complete cycle? To explain in plain simple words I share an interesting metaphor and here it is

The very first phase is requirement gathering and analysis. This phase helps in evaluating the customer on his understanding of the process and requirement to come up with the agreed Statement Of Work (SOW). This is the first contract document between customer and service provider. We also educate the customer to clearly outline their requirement in this phase, for example customer comes with the requirement of a stove because they are sick of the conventional clay stove.

At this point we ask what they want or what were their pain points with previous experience and we list it down

• It shouldn’t produce smoke, because the traditional one was a pain in  the eyes due to smoke.
• It shouldn’t need to be watched continuously, so that the person cooking can also do something else while cooking.
• It should’t over cook or under cook the food should be smart enough to know once food is cooked.
• It should be portable and easy to clean for obvious reasons.
• Should be energy efficient.

Provided the above facts we underline the requirement as below

• It shouldn’t burn the fuel that is the only way to completely eliminate smoke. We need alternative source of smoke less energy.
• It will need a time counter or timer and an interface to capture the time.
• Needs a temperature regulator and should be able to provide consistent temperature.
• Should be made of lightweight heat resistant material.
• Should consume energy wisely.

Customer need to be educated that it would require consistent source of un-conventional energy such as electricity instead of wood and charcoal. Once agreed and SOW is signed deal is sealed.

What is your metaphor of SDLC let us know in comments, We would be covering the other phases of SDLC in subsequent follow ups of this post stay tuned and share your understanding of it did we succeed to simplify it for your children or we confused you more share your thoughts in comments below.