9 Best Practices for the Software Development Lifecycle

Delivery value to clients and developing innovative software involves more than coding expertise. Hard skills are important, but soft skills, such as project planning and management, can decide whether or not a team achieves its goals. There is a guide to help project managers and other leaders plan their software development from start to finish: the software engineering development lifecycle.

Following this framework and industry best practices will boost team performance and provide the resources required to meet client expectations and business objectives. In this article, we will explore the lifecycle and how teams can boost its effectiveness with additional approaches and software engineering management platforms such as Enji.

The Software Development Lifecycle (SDLC) is a structured framework for planning, creating, testing, deploying, and maintaining software systems. It provides software teams with a systematic approach to ensure quality, efficiency, and consistency throughout the development process. The SDLC helps engineers improve project management, reduce development risks, and ensure successful software delivery. The lifecycle includes specific stages to guide teams in understanding, addressing potential issues early, and delivering solutions that meet user needs.

• Planning: Define the project's scope, objectives, and feasibility. Identify resources, timelines, and risks.
• Requirements analysis: Gather and document functional and non-functional requirements. Engage stakeholders for clarity.
• Design: Develop technical specifications and architecture, focusing on system components and user interfaces.
• Implementation (Coding): Write the actual code for the software according to design specifications.
• Testing: Validate the software through various tests (unit, integration, system) to identify and resolve defects.
• Deployment: Release the software to the intended environment (e.g., production) and ensure readiness for use.
• Maintenance: Address bugs, implement updates, and ensure the software continues to meet user needs over time.

Teams that adopt the SDLC receive several benefits, including:

• Standardized procedure: The phases of SDLC provide a clear project path from start to finish that helps keep teams on track without much divergence.
• Easy identification of inefficiencies: Standardizing the workflow narrows down the areas where problems can occur.
• Better security: SDLC focuses on security through the integration of various measures within the development process, including code reviews, threat modeling, penetration testing, and more.
• Effective planning: Leaders know what steps to follow and understand how much time each requires.
• Easy automation: Certain steps within the SDLC can be completed using tools to reduce a team's workload and boost productivity.
• Trust: Processes such as SDLC that are recognized by professionals provide peace of mind to clients and other stakeholders that their projects are being managed well and are secure.
• Improved resource management: With a clear understanding of the steps and resources required for a project, it becomes easier to manage them.
• Better decision making: All of the above aspects convert into clear strategies that leaders can use to make decisions related to future projects and resource allocation.

Today, it is easier to adhere to the SDLC and optimize a team's work by leveraging the vast amounts of data available and which individuals and teams produce through their performance.

Individuals and groups create data in all project activities. Here are some examples:

• Task status changes
• Comments to tasks
• Worklogs
• Reports, such as text-based stand-ups

Each piece of information is an ingredient leaders can use to identify what works within their SDLC and what is delaying a team from achieving its goals. Data plays the role of enhancing the development lifecycle to produce secure software. Likewise, the information that individuals produce is an objective reflection of their performance and can be used in reviews to provide personalized guidance for every team member.

As mentioned above, SDLC provides teams with a structure for their work; however, like any approach, it only works when applied properly and in an accepting environment. Below are nine best practices that teams can apply to ensure their SDLC brings them straight to their goals.

The SDLC can lead to effective planning; however, this will not happen by itself. Teams and businesses must approach these steps with care and attention. Invite all relevant stakeholders to the process at various stages to ensure that plans are complete and include the concerns of as many people as possible.

Despite effective and comprehensive planning, there will be risks that teams must consider to minimize their effect on the workflow. Involve stakeholders in determining risks and plan for them properly.

The SDLC is a process, but if a team lacks proper management of that process, following the steps becomes a challenge. From procedures such as task statuses to responsible team members, it is essential to establish workflow management to support SDLC.

Embrace AI insights and assistance to optimize wherever possible, from the workflow to communication. This will increase the speed of completing the SDLC without sacrificing quality and allow teams to focus on more important tasks rather than repetitive actions.

When a team member does not understand what to do, they waste time clarifying their instructions. Skip misunderstandings and waiting for replies by writing transparent descriptions of tasks that highlight expectations and provide all the information the task performer requires.

Closely tied to the previous point, effective instructions are easier to write when there are fewer steps to complete. If a task is complicated, define it as an "Epic," for example, and break it down into smaller subtasks that can be easily understood by assignees.

Maintaining continuous documentation of code, changes, and security risks allows teams to remain focused on the scope of work without scope creep. When future issues arise, proper documentation can save time and reduce the impact of problems on the workflow. Likewise, if new team members are onboarded in the middle of the project, documentation is an excellent way for them to become familiar with the team’s progress. 

Apart from the technical side of conducting SDLC, teams can make several foundational adjustments to improve their results, such as SCRUM practices. These include asynchronous communication to reduce meetings and stress, as well as to drive workflows with data to see where and how to make effective changes. Daily or regular check-ins and retrospectives are another essential part of this approach to provide clear details on progress and reflect on problems and successes.

Individual and engineering team metrics, such as DORA metrics and Cycle Time, among other data, provide insight into how engineers approach tasks and projects. Use them as signals to identify bottlenecks and promote quality software engineering.

Enji supports each of the best practices outlined above through the collection and analysis of data from across teams and project activities in a single dashboard.

Enji starts by identifying data sources:

• Task activities, such as status changes and comments
• Individual and team engineering metrics
• Worklogs
• Asynchronous stand-ups

Then, Enji makes this data available in concise, easy-to-understand reports and visuals that allow leaders to pinpoint roadblocks and effective practices to make data-driven decisions. In terms of workflow management, Enji offers several features to encourage disciplined processes and keep teams moving toward goals and success:

• Daily asynchronous stand-ups: Teams report on progress and roadblocks to their work in text form to allow others, especially managers, to quickly adjust workflows.
• Automated task alerts and reports: Enji keeps teams updated on inactive tasks and overall progress toward targets.
• Reminders: Bots remind team members to submit stand-ups, update tasks, complete worklogs, and much more.

Ineffective and unnecessary communication can delay a team's progress, and Enji helps reduce it through these and other features. Likewise, the Individual and Team Coding Metrics tools help leaders assess the work of their engineers and development teams without micromanagement. These metrics also help tech managers:

• Curate the necessary cycle time for the project
• Identify issues in code quality
• Encourage industry best practices for software development

Enji can be customized to meet the needs of any team or company in their efforts to adhere to the principles of the software engineering development lifecycle.