What does the Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC) look like?

The Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC) is a structured process for creating software, involving several stages:

1. Requirements Gathering and Analysis — defining what exactly needs to be developed, collecting customer wishes.
2. Design — creating the system architecture, selecting technologies, designing interfaces and databases.
3. Implementation — writing code according to specifications.
4. Testing — verifying functionality, finding and fixing bugs.
5. Deployment — releasing the product into the operational environment.
6. Maintenance and Support — fixing bugs, updates, improvements.

This cycle can be implemented using different models (waterfall, Agile, iterative), but the main stages remain similar. In QA, it is important to understand each stage for planning testing and ensuring quality.