The software engineering definition from the previous section alludes to the fact that software engineering is a complicated, multi-stage process. In an attempt to provide a formal description of these stages, academia has put forward the concept of the SDLC.
The SDLC is a systematic process for building high-quality software that matches the expectations of the end user or customer while ensuring that the project's cost stays within a reasonable bound.
Over the years, there has been an abundance of alternative model proposals for facilitating software development. The following diagram is a timeline illustrating the years when some of the most popular SDLC models were introduced:
Figure 1: A timeline for the software development models that will be presented in this chapter
In the upcoming sections, we...
