Software application development is traditionally a lengthy and complicated process. It usually starts with a business need or opportunity, a concept, or an idea, and then it undergoes an extended journey involving several skill sets and technologies before it becomes a concrete implementation that users can see, touch, and utilize.

Regardless of any specific process, the software development lifecycle (SDLC) involves three main activities: analysis, construction, and deployment. The analysis activity concentrates on identifying, scoping, and validating the requirements. Construction, on the other hand, concentrates on taking the analysis artifacts and turning them into a concrete and executable computer implementation. Finally, deployment focuses on making the implementation operational and ready for its targeted usage.

The construction activity can be further divided into sub-activities, which can vary in formality depending on the adopted SDLC process and the overall size and complexity of the developed software. These activities are:

• developing an abstract design to satisfy the functional requirements independently of architecture,
• developing an architecture to satisfy the non-functional requirements,
• developing a detailed design by mapping the abstract design into the target technology artifacts in accordance with the architecture, and
• coding the detailed design in the target programming language.

However, The Virtual Enterprise (VE) narrows the construction activity to strictly developing the abstract design, focusing primarily on the application logic, and relieving the development team from the remaining tedious and error-prone activities. Consequently, VE reduces the number of required skill sets, and the overall team size. Visit the VE Difference pages to learn how.