Overview

The Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC) implemented at World ZhuLu, serves as the foundation for our methodologies, procedures, practices and processes to help our worldwide clients succeed.

Covering from initiation, conception, analysis, architecture, to development, testing, implementation, operation and maintenance, it is uniquely devised in conjunction with the needs, policy and guidelines of our clients, while balancing the elements of time and cost against the ease of maintenance, along with Waterfall, Spiral, Agile to Extreme, and Lean programming techniques.

Analysis

While we have implemented and exercised rigid enforcement of standard Software Development Life Cycles, danced to the tunes of CMMi-5 and Six-Sigma, we believe in this Service-Oriented, IT-Consulting field, our principal, proprietary and competitive advantage/strength, is our unrivaled Analyst Group, and its Quadrant Assessment© and Magic Cube©, upon which, the Business Analysis and Requirements Document is drawn within the SDLC paradigm.

If, and only if, the Business Analysis and Requirements Document proves satisfactory, will begin the next stage, Functional Specifications, where the concepts and the requirements are further developed to describe how the business will operate once the approved system is implemented, the impact to the user-base, and how the system will cope with the capability within the required time and budget.

All requirements are defined to a level of detail sufficient for System Design to proceed, and they must be measurable and testable and relate to the business need or opportunity identified in the Analysis Phase.

Architecture

The first step, Logical-Diagram, translates the Functional-Specification, which is an end-user perspective document, into a document/flow-diagram, which is from the System-Development perspective.

In order to solicit and further define the System-Development, World ZhuLu then separates the Architecture into two branches: UI Wire-Frame and ErWin Modeling.

Typically rough and constantly changing, UI-Wireframes refer to sketches by the Visual/Graphic/Front-end designers to draw out the screen, flows and functions, and act as the visual projection of the information and functions necessary in order to accomplish the clients' needs.

Because a picture is worth a thousand words, a fast-moving yet rigidly followed UI-Wireframe process quickly spots miscommunication and misunderstandings. It could also be an extension of the prototype phase initiated earlier.

And with ErWin/PowerDesigner, a Database Modeling process graphically depicts the database integrity. But more importantly, a good database-modeling provides the groundwork for upgrade/migration-scripts from one version of the system to another.

Finally, the Component Specification refines the overall system into the smallest possible components, much like how a Work Breakdown Schedule (WBS) is broken into Work-Packages in the Project-Management Planning Process, so that individual developers can take over the development while the Testers can conduct the Unit Testing without impacting rest of the applications.

Implementation Support

Before each release, World ZhuLu produces at least the following documents:

Code Release Instructions and, Code Rollback Procedures,

Database Release Instructions and, Database Rollback Procedures

Due to the variance of each of our clients, these documents contrast greatly in terms of the length, topics, procedures and Service-Level-Agreements (SLA). Please contact us to samples.