27. Software Development Life Cycle
Date: 2026-08-10
Hypothesis
What is the big picture of the SDLC process?
Approach
Create a Mermaid diagram of the end-to-end SDLC (ideation through decommission) as a shared reference map. The goal is to surface phases and transitions where fullsend agents could automate work later — not to run a reproducible experiment.
See HOW_TO.md for how to read and engage with the diagram.
Results
The diagram shows an iterative waterfall SDLC, and should cover all parts of an organization's software processes.
Conclusion
- The way the steps/transitions are connected is what makes it a waterfall process. We argue that the same steps/transitions would be needed for other SDLC models. I.e. we believe this representation is quite accurate regarding the needed skills.
- We can't document what we don't know. Some steps might be overly simplified because of how little experience we have with them.
- The graph is complex to grasp. Navigating the graph is difficult. Steps need to be grouped so it's easy to understand the 30'000ft view, and then slowly drill down.
- Since we don't know the particular processes of everyone, it should both be easy to replace a set of steps/transitions with a single step, or split a step into a more complex set of steps/transitions.