The Lifecycle
The lifecycle comprises a series of key project phases, which collectively comprise the development.
- Envisioning – enables Charteris and the client to create a high-level shared understanding of the project's overall business requirements, goals and constraints. Envisioning sets the stage for the more formal planning process that will take place during the design phase of the project. The Envisioning phase includes the production of a solution outline, an initial project plan and risk assessment.
- Planning – the production of functional specifications, the validation of the technologies to be used, logical designs, the drafting of testing plans and the creation of development environments.
- Developing – creates the software deliverables, including installation scripts and configuration settings ready for testing and deployment. It also develops user support materials and test cases. This phase includes unit and integration testing. At the end of this phase, the system is considered built and functionality is frozen. The teams focus moves towards increasing the quality and performance of the system.
- Stabilising – begins the process of user acceptance testing. Although bug fixing occurs proactively during the Developing Phase, during stabilisation the team focuses completely on triaging and resolving bugs and getting the system to the point where it is ready for delivery. The stabilising phase culminates in the definitive release milestone, the definitive release being the release candidate which all key stakeholders agree is the version which will be deployed.
- Deploying – deploys the stabilised system. It concerns the deployment of the core solution components (e.g. the web servers) to the physical site, and the commissioning of the environment to ensure it is operationally stable.