home/glossary/System Development Life Cycle

System Development Life Cycle

nounverified· unreviewed·updated Aug 30, 2026

The scope of activities associated with a system, encompassing the system’s initiation, development and acquisition, implementation, operation and maintenance, and ultimately its disposal that instigates another system initiation.

MWENISTIR 7298: Glossary of Key Information Security Terms, Revision 2

Senses

ISACA Cybersecurity Glossary

The phases deployed in the development or acquisition of a software system Scope Note: SDLC is an approach used to plan, design, develop, test and implement an application system or a major modification to an application system. Typical phases of SDLC include the feasibility study, requirements study, requirements definition, detailed design, programming, testing, installation and post- implementation review, but not the service delivery or benefits realization activities.

NIST Cybersecurity Framework

A series of stages that the process of system development goes through in order to design and produce a system.

NIST SP 800-171r3attested usage pack match

No definition is given in NIST SP 800-171r3. The term is attested in use at 5 citations in that document; a definition is pending curation.

Classifications

Entity Type

Process0%rule-basedmulti_axis_classifier_low_confidence.v1
?unassignedlast reviewed

Sensitivity

90%llm-generatedllm:claude-haiku-4-5
?unassignedlast reviewed

Information Class

95%llm-generatedllm:claude-haiku-4-5
?unassignedlast reviewed

Variants

acronym
SDLC
synonym
system design life cycle
plural
System Development Life Cycles
possessive
System Development Life Cycle's
pluralpossessive
System Development Life Cycles'