Process: how software gets built

By Allen Jay Bercero

This is the portal (map of content) for everything about how software is planned, built, and managed, the world of life cycles, methodologies, ceremonies, roles, and artifacts.

Read in this order

If you’re new, follow the numbers. Each one assumes the last.

The conceptual spine

1. Software development life cycle: the stages work passes through (idea → requirements → design → build → test → release → maintain).
   • Planning-stage deep dive: Feasibility study, the go/no-go assessment done before committing (and how it differs from a business plan).
     • Lean alternative: Lean canvas, the one-page, nine-box format startups use instead of a heavy plan or study.
       • Related concepts: Adoption (vs. adaptation) · AARRR (the “pirate metrics” for the Key Metrics box)
2. Software development process: the approach you use to move through those stages. This article untangles methodology vs framework vs SDLC and shows where every buzzword fits.

The two big approaches

3. Waterfall model: the classic plan-driven, sequential approach.
4. Agile software development: the adaptive, iterative family. Defined by the Agile Manifesto.

Agile frameworks (ways to do agile)

5. Scrum: fixed sprints, defined roles and events. The most common.
6. Kanban: continuous flow, limit work-in-progress, no sprints.
7. Extreme programming (XP): agile centered on engineering practices.

Scrum in depth

The mechanics you’ll live day-to-day. Visual overview: the Scrum detail mindmap.

• The time-box: Sprint
• The events: Sprint planning · Daily Scrum · Sprint review · Sprint retrospective
• The main artifact: Product backlog (kept ready via Backlog refinement)
• The quality bar: Definition of Done

Requirements & design artifacts

What the team actually produces when figuring out what and how to build:

• User story: the unit of desired functionality
• Acceptance criteria: the testable conditions that decide when a story is done
• Requirement types: Functional requirement (what it does) · Non-functional requirement (how well it does it)
• Software requirements specification (SRS): the plan-driven document that packages the above (agile uses the backlog + stories instead)
• The fidelity spectrum: Wireframe → Mockup → Prototype

People & roles

• Roles and job titles: the decoder ring for who does what, and why every company labels it differently

Quality and testing

• Verification and validation (V&V): the process view of testing (verification vs validation, QA vs QC, and testing’s place in the lifecycle). The engineering craft of testing (test levels, TDD/ATDD/BDD) lives in Engineering.

Visual overviews (canvas mindmaps)

• Process map: how the methodologies relate.
• Scrum detail map: Scrum’s roles, events, and artifacts.

Planned for this domain: estimation (story points, planning poker), Lean software development, DevOps, SAFe/LeSS scaling.