Systems Development Cycle enhancing business of Concord Systems

Project management consists of the fundamental approaches to appropriate planning, design, execution and monitoring. There are several key considerations for choosing the proper project methodology for their business (Papatheocharous et al., 2017). Concord Systems select SDLC for managing the software development. Concord Systems Inc following SDLC meet all the business deliverables and ultimately complete the project successfully. Concord Systems make critical decisions with the aid of SDLC; the project management can be helpful in conducting the business.

The report explains the seven phases of SDLC- planning phase, analysis phase, design phase, development phase, testing phase, implementation phase and the maintenance phase. Concord Systems with the assistance of SDLC are improvising the business activities and offer better customer service.

Figure 1: The Software Development Cycle

(Source: Pather, 2017, pp- 252)

The system development life cycle is a procedure adopted by software development companies to design and develop high quality software. Concord System Inc. is one such enterprise based in the US is getting several benefits taking up the SDLC process and SDLC models. Concord has been built with the objective of making stream processing fast and efficient (Pather, 2017). It provides facilities to all the developers to write code in C++, Java, Scala. Concord Systems with the help of SDLC delivers high quality software to their customers. SDLC thus aids Concord System to meet the customers’ demands. Concord System follows seven phases of SDLC and completes all the project activities within stipulated deadline and budget.

SDLC Phase	Activities
1. Planning	· Identification and Identification for Development · Detailed assessment of project feasibility · Development of Project Plan
2. Analysis	· Accumulation of all the requirements for the project · Creating process diagrams · Performing a build analysis vs buy analysis
3. Design	· Designing IT infrastructure · Designing system models
4. Development	· Developing the IT infrastructure · Developing the database so that it can integrate with the IT infrastructure
5. Testing	· Writing down all the test conditions · Performing system testing
6. Implementation	· Determining the implementation method · Providing training to the customers · Writing down the user documentation in details
7. Maintenance	· Building help desk to help the customers and solve their queries · Maintenance of the system · Providing environment to support system changes

Table 1: SDLC seven phases

(Source: Created by author)

Planning phase involves three activities. The planning phase helps to identify and select the system for the software development. The planning phase deals the assessment of software project feasibility (Mark Grysiuk, 2016). The planning phase involves the development of project plan. Concord System in the planning phase can assess the best system that will assist to know which are the best system and the best procedure to implement the software.

The project size, project duration, project difficulty, cost-benefit analysis, value chain analysis, resource availability and strategic alignment all these project aspects are determined in the report.  The projects that follow Concord System’s objectives and goals are given priority (Moorthy et al., 2014). Concord System can detect the resources required by the project. Concord can also analyse the stakeholders needed to complete the project. The company can determine the number of developers and testers expect to accomplish the project. The project management team of the company can know the project risks. Critical success factor (CSF) is the factor in which helps to identify all the essential risks associated with the project that requires immediate action. The feasibility study helps Concord to acknowledge whether the proposed project plan is feasible, whether the project will give them desired benefits (Shiang et al., 2016). The project team of Concord System develops a project plan. The project plan helps to identify the financial benefits that the high quality software can get. The project plan leads to legal and contractual study, schedule feasibility study, technical feasibility study and operational study.  All these study approaches help Concord System to develop quality software.

SDLC Phase

SDLC’s analysis phase helps to detect and analyse the customers’ requirements. The analyse phase of SDLC allows Concord System to understand and accumulate all the business requirements. The examine phase aids creation of process diagrams. Concord Systems provide Apache Mesos system to the customers. Apache Mesos is the distributed system that can be built quickly and can run effectively and efficiently. It abstracts hard disk storage, CPU, memory and computes services from the machines and provides a fault-tolerant system on which the Concord programming framework can be executed (Chakravorty, Chakraborty & Jigeesh, 2014). The customers can deploy, scale and kill jobs. They can write their jobs in the programming languages like Scala, C++, Java, Python, Ruby and Go. The customers have the opportunity to publish or subscribe to any other jobs at job process runtime. Different customers have different business requirements. SDLC in the analyse phase gives a chance to Concord to assess how they can integrate their services Apache Moses for their benefits. 

Concord in this phase draw data flow diagram and assess the movement of the information between the external entities and process data storage stored in the system. The process modelling graphically demonstrates the methods of capturing, storing and distributing data between the system and the environment. The computer-aided software engineering tools assist Concord Systems to build an automated system (Hijazi et al., 2014). The computerized system facilitates Concord System to design and develop software. Concord system with the help of CASE tools and DFD gets an overall view of the software design. This phase thus mitigates the risk of software project failure to the maximum extent.

The design phase involves the features and operations which includes the pseudo code, business rules, process diagrams and other documentation. The design phase consists of two primary activities- design of IT infrastructure and design of system models.  The programming framework over Apache Moses may not work, may malfunction, and may produce unpredictable outcome or throughput. Concord Systems design an IT infrastructure and develop a programming framework which Apache Moses support. The C++ developers of Concord Systems have developed a programming framework on Apache Mesos. The users can perform high-performance jobs on the programming framework developed by Concord Systems (Malik et al., 2017). The design phase helps Concord Systems to develop a programming framework which facilitates data processing jobs to run smoothly and efficiently.  The design phase also helps to design a database that can integrate well with the programming framework and Apache Mesos. The customers of Concord System can be able to use the well-designed programming framework. The programming framework interface is user-friendly, and it is quite easy to use (Marandi & Khan, 2015). The customers have no issues working on the programming framework. They are using Apache Mesos along with Concord System’s programming framework with ease.

Phase 1: Planning phase

The design system models help Concord Systems to draw the graphical representation of the software programming framework (Tran & Feuerlicht, 2016). It allows Concord Systems to develop models which include reports, programs and databases.

The graphical user interface is the interface to an information system. Concord Systems has designed a high quality GUI interface for the programming framework. The GUI interface helps the customers to perform their job. The users can deploy, scale and kill jobs with ease. They can publish and subscribe to any other jobs at runtime. The data models help Concord Systems to develop a database and to synchronise with Apache Mesos. The users can write the code in C++, Scala, Ruby, Go, Python and Java and can store values in the database (Sharma, 2017). The entity relationship diagram is a technique for preparing documentation on relationships between the entities in the database environment. This helps Concord Systems to integrate their programming framework with Apache Mesos database. Concord programming framework runs 10x and gives more throughput compared to Apache Stark and Apache Storm.

 

Figure 3: Concord Systems Inc

(Source: Vashisht et al., 2015, pp-384)

The development phase involves the development of an actual system from the documentation prepared in the design phase. In the design phase Concord Systems design the Concord programming framework that will be executed on Apache Mesos (Aljawarneh et al., 2017). They prepare all the plan of the software programming framework, hardware and the other telecommunication equipment. In this phase, the Concord purchases all the necessary hardware and software components that are required to run their application.  After that, they connect the Concord programming framework with the database. They set up an extensive area network and provide cloud based services to the customers.

The C++ developer team of Concord System develops the programming framework of the system. The web designers design the GUI of the website. Concord System after improving the IT infrastructure starts on integrating Concord programming framework with the Apache Mesos database server (Vashisht et al., 2015). The database developers of Concord Systems write important programs that will take appropriate values from the customers.  They create tables that will store appropriate values. The developers develop the database in such a way such that it can integrate with the GUI interface of the website. The developers must integrate with Apache Mesos. The developers take months and years to design the entire programming framework and the database. They release the beta version of the software so that the customers can test the programming framework and review the programming framework (Dambe, Tawde & Kulkarni, 2015). Concord System develops a full-featured programming framework by which the customers can get be able to perform their job activities quickly and efficiently. The customers now can process large chunks of data which is generated in real time.

Phase 2: Analysis phase

The testing phase brings all the pieces of the pieces of the project so that the errors, bugs, interoperability can be identified and can be checked whether the project will meet all the deliverables or not (Pinciroli, 2017). The testing phase ensures that the project meets all the business requirements defined in the analysis phase. There are two activities primarily associated with the testing phase, and they are writing down of test conditions. It also involves system testing. 

Testing is a critical process. Concord Systems has a software testing team. The tester runs every test condition for the programming framework. The tester here compares the expected outcome with the actual results (Karim, Saba & Albuolayan, 2017). The tester team of Concord System scrutinise every activity and then verify the results. If the expected result does not match with the desired results, a bug gets generated, and the system returns to the development team. Concord System analyses the programming framework if the programming framework does not work well, the project is sent back to the C++ developer team. The database bugs can erupt as well, in that scenario, the project returns to the database developer team (Virmani, 2015). The testing team perform testing on the system by several hundred and thousands of test conditions. It takes a vast amount of time to write all the test conditions and perform the experiment. Testing is essential to know whether the programming model will be successful or not.

The system developers of Concord Systems must perform various types of testing. The testing assures that the project will go well and the customers will be happy. The users who use the programming framework will be able to code and execute the results flawlessly (Mahendra & Khan, 2016). The framework should provide the correct output all the time. The testing team will have to consider several scenarios and must ensure that the framework works well. The testing team attempts in several ways to disrupt the system. There are several unorthodox methods which the tester team tries and find out the bugs in the software. The coding errors and the bugs result in disruption of database failures, network failures and the hardware failures. Concord Systems must assure the quality of the software (Marandi & Khan, 2015). The programming framework should not get disrupted otherwise there is a risk that the customers will reject the software. The testing team points out the bugs and the errors, and this is 10 to 100 times cheaper to correct than a bug found at the time of application’s operation. 

Phase 3: Design phase

The implementation phase deals with the handover of the software project to the customers. Concord Systems place the system so that the customers and the users can use the system flawlessly (Merhout & Kovach, 2017). The implementation phase can be stated as ‘delivery’. The implementation phase comprises of two activities: system training and the implementation method.

System training involves the user documentation which provides details on how to use the system. The users of Concord Systems can get to know how to use the system by reading the documentation. Concord Systems provide documentation, and the users must follow the guidelines specified in the documentation (Kaswan, Choudhary & Sharma, 2017). There are other forms of training procedures. Concord Systems can offer training via web and DVD. The online training is cost-effective. The users or the customers can access the online content anywhere everywhere can get to know how to use the programming framework. System training can be imparted using the group training. Concord Systems educate a group of users rather than a group of individuals. Many users or customers that is why become aware of Concord System’s products and Concord System’s services (Pradhan, 2015). Train-the-trainer involves training of some experts, and these experts will train other about Concord framework. Work-shop training is the most effective learning training medium. The customers of Concord Systems can get hands-on-solution on with the aid of work-shop training. 

The maintenance phase includes the performing changes, corrections and upgrades to assure that the project meets all the project activities. A help desk involves a group of people. Concord Systems develops support desk team who helps the users and the individuals to solve queries regarding the software and the framework usage (Hijazi et al., 2014). In this way, they communicate with the customers and know the feedback. The feedback helps the company to offer better customer service. The adaptive maintenance helps Concord System to enhance the system functionality to fulfil the business deliverables; corrective maintenance helps Concord Systems to make appropriate changes to repair underlying defects of the system (Khong, 2017). The perfective maintenance assists Concord Systems to embellish usability as well as processing performance. The preventive maintenance is the reduce the chance of system failures. Change management system helps Concord Systems to work according to the customers’ demands and it helps to improvise the business operations.

Conclusion

It can be concluded from the above discourse Concord Systems with the aid of SDLC improvises the business operations. The project management is associated with the applications of skills, expertise and tools. SDLC is necessary so that the software project activities can be achieved ethically and efficiently. SDLC gives a competitive advantage to the customers. SDLC is also capable of determining the present and the customers’ demands. The project management helps to finish the completed project within the given period. SDLC can reduce the risks associated with the project. The potential risks residing within the project can be addressed with the aid of project management. The change management strategies assist Concord System in mitigating those risks. The report defines the seven phases of SDLC – planning phase, analysis phase, design phase, development phase, testing phase, implementation phase and the maintenance phase. Concord Systems follow all these seven phases and is highly successful. They have designed a programming framework on Apache Mesos. The customers can be able to write codes in C++, Java, Go, Scala and execute. The report shows how Concord Systems can be benefitted following all the seven phases. 

Phase 4: Development Phase

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