No code is an island entire of itself. We are paraphrasing John Donne because nowadays, like human beings and modern businesses, code no longer is created or lives in isolation. Better software companies understand that and reflect that in their offering.
At Code4Nord, we think it’s important to offer full-service software outsourcing, building onto and servicing the entire software development lifecycle or SDLC.
As our customers and their projects would attest to, the demand for nearshore or software outsourcing can come at any stage in the software lifecycle. We’ve leveraged test-driven development or TDD to build a bespoke data generation framework for medical devices, and we’ve integrated incongruent Points of Sales and ERPs . We’ve built completely bespoke software that integrates and displays disparate data points via APIs into a comprehensive overview, and we’ve helped existing, successful software update systems and deliver features faster .
We try to be ready for any exciting challenge you throw our way, by fostering a culture of continuous learning and continuous feedback, and by hiring the right teammates that share our values and dedication to innovation and excellence. We believe by following a thorough, transparent software development lifecycle, we are really able to take ownership of a project and deliver you the best results.
What is the SDLC and why is it important?
Building with a full overview of the software development lifecycle means following a systematic process that balances quality and speed of delivery. While there are various interpretations of SDLC, it typically follows the following seven stages:
- Analyse requirements
- Study feasibility
- Design
- Build
- Test
- Deploy
- Maintain
When working on software outsourcing projects, the first step, the requirements analysis, is the most important. This is when you bring all stakeholders together — the client, senior dev team members, and maybe even end users or domain experts — to clarify the project’s scope and expectations.
Next, our team looks at any existing software and examines the determined requirements under the lens of a feasibility study. Understanding the current operational and technical feasibility, we determine the right financial and time budget necessary. We also consider any regulatory requirements, like the data flow and storage needed to adhere to Europe’s GDPR.
Following another round of conversations with the client, we start creating a high-level overview design and the more in-depth low-level design.
Another round of feedback comes from you the client before we start the part of SLDC where we add the most value, but usually takes the most time — the coding process.
That’s followed by testing, deployment, and, if you want, maintenance.
Incremental client review and feedback is essential to making sure we’re delivering or exceeding your expectations.
How does SLDC translate across different company cultures?
The Code4Nord team is not only flexible in the languages and architecture we’re building with, we are adaptable to your current company culture and workflow.
Most modern software development lifecycle processes follow one of two SLDC models: Waterfall or Agile.
The Waterfall Model is the most traditional SDLC model present still in larger organisations and more traditional sectors. Like a series of cascading waterfalls, you finish one phase and it’s smaller plan before you move onto the next. This is very useful when working in heavily regulated sectors like finance and healthcare, where you have to make sure every step is compliant, however, this can lead to a must slower development process. Waterfall cycles have teams only releasing a couple times a year, but these releases are usually very significant.
Agile methodologies are now being applied to software teams large and small as a more rapid way to develop, test, and release based on rapid feedback. Instead of one long plan made up of mini plans, agile develops each piece of software or feature into a mini SDLC cycle — imagine a chain made up of many smaller, connected links. You make a lot of smaller, iterative changes that garner feedback quickly, which feeds into the next release. Agile is often practiced alongside Scrum, which means Agile-Scrum teams usually release every two weeks.
As companies embrace DevOps — the blurring of the lines between development and operation so developers now own the testing and releasing of their own code — the devs writing the code are more and more often present at all SDLC stages. This leads to adoption of tooling that gives everyone an overview of the software development process, and to the increasing popularity of test-driven development (TDD), continuous testing, monitoring, and observability, and continuous integration. DevOps sees teams releasing at least a few times per day.
Other SLDC models include the iterative model, the spiral model, the v-model, the big bang model, the RAD model, the rapid application development, and various prototyping models.
We find that most organisations are actually at some point of transitioning between or blending different SDLC models. You do what works for your architecture and your team. Then, as a software outsourcing company, we work our services into your company culture and workflow.