The Systems Development Lifecycle - a fundamental, natural human process

Folks:

One thing you need to understand about the System Development Lifecycle (SDLC) is that each model is simply one author's way of describing (or “modeling”) a fundamental, natural process that we humans use instinctively to make anything from tonight's family dinner, to a global Business Information System (BIS), to landing a person on Mars.

While there are, admittedly, quite a few more tasks to be completed in landing a human on Mars than in getting tonight's dinner (unless I'm cooking...but that's another story!), both activities take an idea and bring it to fruition. The base process is the same every time. It's the same whether there is one person or one hundred thousand people involved in making the idea come true.

The thing that's always amazed me, though, is that although most of us use this process every day, it is such an ingrained part of us that most times most folks don't even realize they're using the SDLC...it's just the way things get done.
Join me as I use the SDLC to put together tonight's typical family dinner. We'll:

Start with a problem (“darned kids are hungry again! I just fed them last night!”),

Develop some options to solve the problem (“Let's see, what are my options. I guess I could let them go hungry, I could order pizza (again), or I could try to cook something for them here”),

Choose the best option for our situation (“I better make dinner here. I'll catch heck from my lovely better half if I feed the kids pizza three nights in a row!”);

Develop a specification (“Let's see, I better give them some veggies tonight...and no fish! There's no way I'm fighting to get little Janie to eat THAT again!”);

Design the product / system / dinner (“Cookbook....where the heck did that darned thing get to?!?”);

Build the product (“Ok. I've got the peas and carrots in the microwave. It says fifty minutes at 300 degrees for the chicken nuggets and fries...but the kids are hungry...I can speed this up....fifteen minutes at 500 degrees should work, right?”);

Test the product (“Ooooo...are those burned?”)

Fix the problems and retest (“If I scrape off the black spots and use a lot of ketchup, the kids will never know the difference!”)

Deliver the product to the customer (“Come on, Janie, eat! Daddy worked really hard on this dinner! You'll hurt Daddy's feelings if you don't eat!”)

Maintain, update and/or correct errors (“Hello, Bocce Club Pizzeria? Yeah, it's me again. Same order as last night. Yeah, delivery. Thanks. And if you promise not to tell my wife, there's an extra $20 in it for you. Yeah...again.!”)

Well, this is typical dinner at my house (at least when my wife works late!). But I think you get the idea. The SDLC isn't some complex process that was developed by and can only be implemented by some secret (and exorbitantly expensive) cabal of Information Technology (IT) Professionals and Business Consultants...although as an IT Professional and Business Consultant, I will admit many of my colleagues would love everyone to believe that.

Of course, the more complex the idea you are trying to bring to fruition, the more time and money it is going to take to make it happen. A typical Mom (or Dad) preparing dinner for her family might complete the entire project lifecycle - from need Identification (“darn, the kids are probably hungry!”) to Project Wrap-up (“Whew, the dishes are FINALLY done!”) - in an hour or two; while the team working to put a person on Mars will take decades and maybe trillions of dollars to get through theirs.

Understand that. regardless of which model you use to describe this process, each of the steps must be completed and, with a few exceptions that aren't relevant to this discussion, those steps must be completed order.

It's the way it works for virtually every human endeavor.

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I'd love to hear what you think. Feel free to leave a comment here or e-mail me at: TomFawls@Council4SmallBiz.com.