Every Vyam plan now follows the software development life cycle

From today, every plan Vyam drafts follows the software development life cycle, usually called the SDLC. A new project starts with seven phases in a fixed order: Planning, Requirements, Design, Development, Testing, Deployment and Maintenance. The plan's tasks are placed in the phase they belong to, so you can see at a glance where a project stands and what is still ahead.

Why we did this

Until now a plan had five phases, and the work of working out what the project must do was folded into Planning. Afterwards, once something was live, there was no place for the work that follows: watching how it runs, collecting feedback and fixing the first problems. Most small projects skip exactly those two parts, and they are often where a project quietly fails. Putting them in the plan makes them visible and gives them a date.

The seven phases

• Planning: the brief, who does what, and the schedule. For a portfolio or a personal project this is also where you write down who it is for or why you are building it.
• Requirements: what it must do. The must-have features and a plain statement of what "done" looks like.
• Design: how it will be structured, the screens and the data.
• Development: building it.
• Testing: checking that the main flows work and fixing what does not.
• Deployment: putting it live, or handing it over, with release notes.
• Maintenance: collecting feedback from the first people who use it and fixing the first problems they raise.

What has not changed

• You can still choose your own steps. Remove the ones a small project does not need, add a phase of your own, or put one between two others, on the Phases page when you start a project.
• Portfolio and personal projects keep their own shorter list of phases, because they are not built the same way.
• Projects you made earlier stay exactly as they are. Nothing is moved or renamed.
• You review and edit the whole plan before anything is saved, as before.

How to use it

Start a new project and describe your idea. The Phases page lists the seven steps; keep them all or take out the ones you do not need. Vyam then drafts the tasks, spreads them across the phases, and gives each a date that fits your deadline. If you are new to planning a project, this guide to planning a college project shows the same order of work by hand.

If something about the plans does not look right to you, tell us. These phases are the starting point, and we would like to hear where they do not fit the way you work.