Every reliable program is built in ordered stages, from working out what is needed to keeping it running once it is finished. In this lesson we walk through those stages, learn how to break a problem into inputs, processes, outputs and storage, and see how top-down design and structure diagrams organise a solution into sub-systems.
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The stages of the life cycle
The program development life cycle is the ordered set of stages a solution passes through: analysis, design, coding, testing and maintenance.
Analysis works out exactly what the problem is and what the finished program must do, before any code is written.
Design plans how the program will meet those requirements, using tools such as structure diagrams, flowcharts and pseudocode.
Coding writes the program in a chosen programming language, and only then does the solution start to exist as software.
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1. Which sequence lists the stages of the program development life cycle in the correct order?
2. A program reads a temperature, decides whether it is too high, and saves a warning message to a file. Saving the message to the file is an example of which part of decomposition?
3. What is the main purpose of a structure diagram in top-down design?