The waterfall model, documented in 1970 by Royce was the first public documented life cycle model. The waterfall model is a popular version of the systems development life cycle model for software engineering. The waterfall model describes a development method that is linear and sequential. Waterfall development has distinct goals for each phase of development.
Because the life cycle steps are described in very general terms, the models are adaptable and their implementation details will vary among different organizations. The spiral model is the most general. There is various software development approaches defined and designed which are used during development process of software, these approaches are also referred as Software Development Process Models. Each process model follows a particular life cycle in order to ensure success in process of software development.
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One such process used in Software Development is The Waterfall Model. Waterfall model was first Process Model to be introduced and followed widely in Software Engineering to ensure success of the project. In The Waterfall model, the whole process of software development is divided into separate process phases. The phases in Waterfall model are: Requirement Specifications phase, Software Design, Implementation and Testing & Maintenance. All these phases are cascaded to each other so that second phase is started as and when defined set of goals are achieved for first phase and it is signed off, so the name Waterfall Model.
The real flow of waterfall model
The stages of The Waterfall Model are:
Requirement Analysis & Definition:
Requirements are set of functionalities and constraints that the end-user (who will be using the system) expects from the system. The requirements are gathered from the end-user by consultation, these requirements are analyzed for their validity and the possibility of incorporating the requirements in the system to be development is also studied. Finally, a Requirement Specification document is created which serves the purpose of guideline for the next phase of the model.
System & Software Design:
Before a starting for actual coding, it is highly important to understand what we are going to create and what it should look like? The requirement specifications from first phase are studied in this phase and system design is prepared. System Design helps in specifying hardware and system requirements and also helps in defining overall system architecture. The system design specifications serve as input for the next phase of the model.
Implementation & Unit Testing:
On receiving system design documents, the work is divided in modules/units and actual coding is started. The system is first developed in small programs called units, which are integrated in the next phase. Each unit is developed and tested for its functionality; this is referred to as Unit Testing. Unit testing mainly verifies if the modules/units meet their specifications.
Integration & System Testing:
As specified above, the system is first divided in units which are developed and tested for their functionalities. These units are integrated into a complete system during Integration phase and tested to check if all modules/units coordinate between each other and the system as a whole behaves as per the specifications. After successfully testing the software, it is delivered to the customer.
Operations & Maintenance:
This phase of The Waterfall Model is virtually never ending phase (Very long). Generally, problems with the system developed (which are not found during the development life cycle) come up after its practical use starts, so the issues related to the system are solved after deployment of the system. Not all the problems come in picture directly but they arise time to time and needs to be solved; hence this process is referred as Maintenance.
There are some advantages of the Waterfall Model.
The advantage of waterfall development is that it allows for departmentalization and managerial control.
A schedule can be set with deadlines for each stage of development and a product can proceed through the development process like a car in a carwash, and theoretically, be delivered on time.
Development moves from concept, through design, implementation, testing, installation, troubleshooting, and ends up at operation and maintenance.
There are some disadvantages of the Waterfall Model.
As it is very important to gather all possible requirements during the requirement gathering and analysis phase in order to properly design the system, not all requirements are received at once, the requirements from customer goes on getting added to the list even after the end of Requirement Gathering and Analysis phase, this affects the system development process and its success in negative aspects.
The problems with one phase are never solved completely during that phase and in fact many problems regarding a particular phase arise after the phase is signed off, these results in badly structured system as not all the problems (related to a phase) are solved during the same phase.
The project is not partitioned in phases in flexible way.
As the requirements of the customer goes on getting added to the list, not all the requirements are fulfilled, this results in development of almost unusable system. These requirements are then met in newer version of the system; this increases the cost of system development.
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