NPCBL Executive Trainee (Software) — Exam: 26.05.2023 (IBA)প্রশ্ন ও সমাধান

Direct answer: the Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC) is the structured sequence of phases a team follows to plan, build, test, and maintain software, ensuring quality and predictability rather than ad-hoc coding.

graph LR
  A[Requirement Analysis] --> B[System Design]
  B --> C[Implementation / Coding]
  C --> D[Testing]
  D --> E[Deployment]
  E --> F[Maintenance]
  F -.feedback.-> A

Phases explained

• Requirement Analysis: gather and document what the system must do, by interviewing stakeholders and studying the current process.
• System Design: translate requirements into architecture — database schema, module structure, UI layout, and technology choices.
• Implementation (Coding): developers write the actual source code following the design, in the chosen programming language(s).
• Testing: verify the code against requirements — unit, integration, system, and acceptance testing — to catch defects before release.
• Deployment: release the tested software into the production environment for end users.
• Maintenance: fix bugs found in production, apply patches, and add enhancements as requirements evolve over the software's lifetime.

Why a defined SDLC matters: without these phases, requirements get missed, design flaws surface late (when they are far more expensive to fix), and testing is rushed — a defined SDLC (whether followed as Waterfall, sequentially, or as Agile, iteratively per phase) keeps cost, schedule, and quality under control.

Exam takeaway: the six universal SDLC phases — requirement analysis, design, implementation, testing, deployment, maintenance — apply regardless of process model; Waterfall runs them once in strict order, while Agile/Iterative models repeat a lightweight version of all six every sprint.