The Waterfall Model of Software Development

March 17 11:10 2016 by Nataliia Vasylyna Print This Article

The employees of software testing company should not only have profound knowledge of various testing techniques and principles, use different checking tools during automated testing but also be aware of main software development models.

Software development and testing fields are interconnected. It will be easier to conduct performance testing or load testing for a tester who knows the peculiarities of development models. The Waterfall model is one such development techniques.

This model was described by W. Royce in 1970. It is considered to be a classic example of the philosophy ‘plan the work and work the plan’. It is a rather popular version of the software development life cycle model. The Waterfall Model consists of several typical phases.

What Are Waterfall Phases?

Analyzing and defining system requirements.
Analyzing and categorizing software requirements.
Detecting of program design (architecture, interface, etc. that define the system).
Implementation of the design with the help of code. This is the actual phase of programming.
Testing procedure. The requirements should be understood in a proper way, and at the same time, the system design should meet all required specifications.
Putting the system into production.

The Waterfall model has a strict order, and every step can be easily controlled. The main disadvantage of this model is the absence of the possibility to somehow modify the development order.