Apply Application Management Across Every Systems Development Lifecycle (SDLC) Phase and Release

This chapter explains how Application Management, and Application Documentation in particular, apply across every phase of the Systems Development Lifecycle (SDLC) and in every Release, and how the following subsections of this document are organized around those phases.

The SDLC as the Backbone of Application Management

Every Application passes through a lifecycle from its first proposal to its eventual retirement. The IF4IT Systems Development Lifecycle (SDLC) Best Practices describes that lifecycle in thirteen phases: Intake and Strategizing; Research and Prototyping; Planning; Requirements Capture; Design; Implementation and Build; Systems Integration Testing (SIT); User Acceptance Testing (UAT); Training and Education; Pre-Production Staging; Production; Operations and Maintenance; and Retirement, Decommissioning, and Disposal.

Application Management does not replace or re-teach the SDLC. Instead, for each phase, it asks: what must be established and documented about this Application in this phase, who reviews it, and what evidence shows it was done? The answers become the Application’s Documentation, built up phase by phase.

How the Following Subsections Map to the SDLC

The placement of a chapter reflects the phase in which its topic is first established. Most topics continue to be maintained in later phases and later Releases.

The Phases Repeat with Every Release

An Application does not pass through the SDLC only once. Each Release passes through the phases again, whether the enterprise delivers through Agile sprints, Waterfall Releases, or a hybrid approach. Each pass is both an opportunity and an obligation: to create documentation for what is new, and to update documentation for what has changed. Documentation is therefore never “finished”; it evolves with the Application.

Not Every Release Uses Every Phase

The SDLC is a superset. Enterprises tailor it into approved SDLC Paths that select the phases a particular kind of Release needs: a minor configuration change does not need the same path as a new Application. Application Management follows the same tailoring. The documentation required for a Release is the documentation that the phases on its path create or change, plus a review of the documentation as a whole, which accompanies every Release.

Best Practice: Apply Application Management in Every SDLC Phase of Every Release

For every Release of every Application, identify the SDLC phases its path includes, establish and document what each of those phases requires for the Application, and review the documentation as a whole before Production Deployment.

Benefits: Building documentation phase by phase captures knowledge when it is created, by the people who create it, instead of trying to reconstruct it at the end. Repeating this with every Release, along whatever path the Release follows, keeps documentation growing and changing in step with the Application itself.

Connections to Related IF4IT Practices and Inventories

The Systems Development Lifecycle (SDLC) Best Practices describes each of the thirteen phases, SDLC Paths, and SDLC Utilization Profiles in detail. The IF4IT framework “Agile, Waterfall, or Hybrid: An IF4IT Framework for Choosing Delivery Methodology” explains how delivery methodology relates to the lifecycle.