Its been said before that if you fail to plan then you plan to fail. This is never more apparent than in todays projects. In fact, planning is the pivotal point to a project beginning development versus a project that will inevitably fail. To look at how project fail we must first look at a project life cycle. Doing a quick search youll see that SDLC consists of 6-7 steps. This all depends if the author is looking at a linear model or a life cycle model; with maintenance of the system being the 7th step. I disagree with the linear model of SDLC because the title itself says that this project or system will have a life-cycle which means that any step may need to be reworked or revisited. Morris (n.d.) describes the SDLC with the following 6 steps: Planning, Analysis, Design, Construction, Test, Rollout. Other authors like Meghere (2014) add Maintenance as a seventh step. Seeing these steps laid out leaves 4 steps in particular that I see failure happening. Steps 1-3 are essential to getting the job done right. Without these steps any project will fail. And without a plan to maintain (step 7) a project that deploys will eventually be a failure. This is why the SDLC is a full-circle model. Its not linear as the maintenance drives a restart in the project. As new features or errors are discovered the team must restart with a plan to add or fix and the project starts over on a much smaller scale. Sources: Meghera, H. (2014, May 31). 7 Stages Of Systems Development Life Cycle. Retrieved July 04, 2017, from Morris, K. (n.d.). Steps in the System Development Life Cycle. Retrieved July 04, 2017, from
