As a frequent technology writer I often find myself referring to the method or process that teams use to produce software. The two terms that are usually given for this are software development life cycle (SDLC) and product development life cycle (PDLC). The question that I have is are these really interchangeable? I don’t think so and here’s why.

Under SDLC, Wikipedia doesn’t let us down and explains it as a structure imposed on the development of software products. In the article are references to multiple different models including the classic waterfall as well as agile, RAD, and Scrum and others.

In my mind the PDLC is the overarching process of product development that includes the business units. The SDLC is the specific steps within the PDLC that are completed by the technical organization (product managers included). An image on HBSC’s site that doesn’t seem to have any accompanying explanation depicts this very well graphically.

Another way to explain the way I think of them is to me all professional software projects are products but not all product development includes software development.  See the Venn diagram below. The upfront (bus analysis, competitive analysis, etc) and back end work (infrastructure, support, depreciation, etc) are part of the PDLC and are essential to get the software project created in the SDLC out the door successfully.  There are non-software related products that still require a PDLC to develop.

Do you use them interchangeably?  What do you think the differences are?

This entry was posted on Sunday, January 3rd, 2010 at 11:12 am and is filed under Engineering. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.