Rethinking the SDLC

Note: Presentation times are in Coordinated Universal Time (UTC).

Website Maintenance Alert

Due to scheduled maintenance, the USENIX website may not be available on Monday, March 17, from 10:00 am–6:00 pm Pacific Daylight Time (UTC -7). We apologize for the inconvenience and thank you for your patience.

If you would like to register for NSDI '25, SREcon25 Americas, or PEPR '25, please complete your registration before or after this time period.

Wednesday, 13 October, 2021 - 01:1502:00

Emily Freeman, AWS

Abstract: 

The software (or systems) development lifecycle has been in use since the 1960s. And it’s remained more or less the same since before color television and the touchtone phone. While it’s been looped it into circles and infinity loops and designed with trendy color palettes, the stages of the SDLC remain almost identical to its original layout.

Yet the ecosystem in which we develop software is radically different. We work in systems that are distributed, decoupled, complex and can no longer be captured in an archaic model. It’s time to think different. It’s time for a revolution.

The Revolution model of the SDLC captures the multi-threaded, nonsequential nature of modern software development. It embodies the roles engineers take on and the considerations they encounter along the way. It builds on Agile and DevOps to capture the concerns of DevOps derivatives like DevSecOps and AIOps. And it, well, revolves to embrace the iterative nature of continuous innovation. This talk introduces this new model and discusses the need for how we talk about software to match the experience of development.

SREcon21 Open Access Sponsored by Indeed

BibTeX

Presentation Video