Why Top Testing Companies Tend to Use Waterfall Development Model
What is a waterfall model of SDLC? Lifecycle is the overall process during which software systems are developed, it describes all the development phases and a sequence in which they are executed. The phases are as follows: requirements elicitation and analysis, designing, creating and programming, deployment, use and maintenance.
Software lifecycle models are designed to achieve different objectives. Waterfall model of software lifecycle involves a sequence of iterations of the development activities. It has precise goals for each development phase. You can move on to a next development phase only after successful completion of previous phase of development and there is no possibility to turn back.
Apart from other approaches to software development, top testing companies also use waterfall model for testing small projects where the requirements are simple and well-defined. Due to cascading effect from one phase to the other, this method is costs-effective, easy to use & follow, allows managerial control and departmentalization.
Phases of activities
Requirements: It is an initial phase of development life cycle, which involves gathering and documenting requirements.
Analysis: At this phase we define and analyze task, which is to be performed by the program. The phase can be considered as fully complete if the gathered requirements are valid.
Design: At this phase, the requirements identified in the requirements analysis are transformed into the system specification – a document that describes how the program will be designed and how the system will be working with particular reference to hardware, architecture of the system, user interface. The main goal of this phase is to develop a project which will meet all the documented requirements, and further to identify all inputs, outputs and processes needed and help to avoid any misunderstandings by engaging stakeholders who are users and managers.
Mobile testing companies also use waterfall model in testing mobile applications. This is the most common approach to test software products but the old one capable to verify limited functionality. Most testing companies use more agile and modern testing methodologies such as Scrum which helps to satisfy time-to-market needs of mobile users.
Implementation: During this phase, testing aims to ensure that all defects are detected and the app complies with its required specification; all the development works are carried out and development units / components are handed over to testers.
Testing: Once the development process is completed, software testing service providers begin testing each component or unit to verify that they are functionally correct. All testing activities are conducted in this very phase.
Deployment and maintenance are the last 2 phases of Waterfall model.