business processes as the hub of the SDLC

Whilst giving a demonstration of AutotestPro to a prospect recently, we explained how we put the business processes at the very centre of the software delivery life-cycle and how the magic starts when you do this.  Suddenly everything becomes very easy and very automatic.

When you step back and think about it, every stage of the software delivery life-cycle from requirements, through design, development, testing and release, acts in some way on the business processes.  The processes the user will perform are after all, the reason why the system is being built!

The common thing throughout every stage of the life-cycle are the business processes.  Additional information is added to those processes as they move through the lifecycle:

• Requirements are the definition of how those processes will be performed and your acceptance criteria are what should or should not happen at each stage of the process.
• Design is how each of those business process steps will be met in the solution.
• Development tasks are an instruction to build a business process step that have not yet been developed.
• Testing is the actual running of those business processes against the defined acceptance criteria.
• User guides and desk instructions are the business processes with additional helpful information for the user and screen shots of what the user will see.

Software delivery without business processes at the centre, is like having a bicycle wheel with no central hub for the spokes to attach to.  A wheel with no centre is weak, even useless and would make cycling very difficult or impossible.

A wheel with business processes at the centre is strong, fast and efficient.  Software delivery is strong, fast and efficient when working with a solution that puts business processes at the centre.

Interestingly, the first wheel was invented in 3500 BC, but it wasn't until 1,500 years later, that the first spoked wheel was invented.

According to Wikipedia, the SDLC came into existence in the 1960s.  Only 56 years later did AutotestPro apply for a patent for the idea of putting business processes at the centre of the software development lifecycle.