Summary

Even if there is no formal SDLC in place, a lot of the information that would come out of one is still advantageous for developers to have access to. If enough of it is available, and if it's sufficiently detailed, readily accessible, and, above all, accurate, it can certainly help make the difference between a project just being programmed and being well-engineered software.

Another significant contributor to making that difference is the availability of similar information about the system itself, in any or all of several System Model artifacts. Those provide more implementation-oriented details that should be at least as useful as the policy and procedure-level information from the various SDLC artifacts. We’ll take a look at those next.