SDLC and Work Patterns

Nick Malick stumbled upon a real common misconception. In a recent blog post he mentioned that a SOA SDLC must be more iterative:

First, a comparison: Waterfall looks like this:
Waterfall: Plan --> Envision --> Design --> Develop & Test --> Deploy
Agile: Plan --> Sprint --> Sprint --> (occasionally) Deploy --> Sprint --> Deploy

A SOA SDLC looks more like this:

Plan --> Sprint (Process and User Experience) --> Sprint (Process & Services) --> Deploy --> Sprint (P&UX) --> Sprint (P&S) --> Deploy

What Nick is describing is the use of Work Patterns within an SDLC. It is common for people to accidentally combine these two distinct concepts.

Here's the difference...
- SDLC focuses on the phases, activities and artifacts
- Work Patterns focus on the selection of phases, iterations and workflows

It's hard to describe but take a look at this and I think you'll see what I mean:
http://www.usdoj.gov/jmd/irm/lifecycle/table.htm

See section 13.2 for an example. I do agree that running a serial SOA SDLC is not a good thing. I was glad to see Nick mention User Experience. Usually, we'll talk about the Consumer SDLC and aligning it with the Service SDLC.

Good Stuff!