Now that legwork and planning of the site is essentially completed, it’s time to build the site. In this phase we take the design and documentation assembled thus far, and put the two together to produce a fully functional and interactive site.
The development phase is where the visual design will be converted into online code, and any supporting products installed, and/or any functionality developed. Our development process consists of:
Use Case Modeling:
This step, producing the use case model, focuses on the user experience, i.e. what the system (the site) can do from a functional perspective, with no regards to how it will be implemented. If needed, it can be used as an early buy-in from the end user and make sure the system covers all needed functionality.
High Level Design Document (HLD):
This step will divide the system into sub systems or components, that together will comprise the desired system. It's very important to define the interfaces between these components and think it through such that development of these components can be done in parallel and later integrated. This is the time to make architectural decisions will be made.
Low Level Design Document (LLD):
During this step, the high level design is verified, of course, and updated if needed. During low level design each component will be defined so that we know how it will implement the interfaces defined in the previous step. A Class diagram and a sequence diagram may be used to make sure all participants have the same understanding.
Database Design:
The database design, is the heart of database driven applications. An ERD or detailed database diagram maybe developed at this step to be converted later to actual db objects. During all steps, previous steps are checked again and again for any missed details. The earlier an error is discovered the easier it is to fix.
Coding:
Actual coding happens here. The following of industry standard development procedures ensures software that is easy to maintain and develop.
Unit Testing:
Unit testing is usually used when referring to 2 things;
Catching bugs, and fixing them, at this stage is more efficient than catching them at a later stage. Sometimes an analysis is done at the end of the project to understand where most of the bugs come from. Developing robust and maintainable code is the pride of all developers.
Design Integration:
Partially, design integration starts during planning the project phases and planning of development subtasks. Integration of development units is the final step of development, after which the entire system can be tested.
Testing:
A test plan can be developed once we have the requirements, or after detailing the requirements in the Use Case Model. The tester should develop it and the developer (in conjunction with the Project Manager) should approve it. Once approved, the tester will wait until the integration is done to start testing. There's different types of testing; functional testing, stress testing, and regression testing, manual and automated testing. Planned and ad hoc testing.