7 Essential Software Models: Which SDLC Model Is Best for You?

Software development models and methodologies were created to simplify software engineering. With years of experience in software development, Onix experts tried each software model out there and learned to choose the most suitable one for a particular business case. 

 

In this post, we share our review of the 7 most popular software development models based on our experience and essential steps to a successful development process based on real-life experience.

Strategy For a Successful Software Development Process

Based on our experience working with many clients, we can easily distinguish between a poorly organized software development process model and an outstanding one. A well-adjusted process presupposes competent organization, insight, and plain hard work for skilled people.

 

Read also: Best Practices for Outsourcing Software Development in 2025

 

You might possess some technical knowledge, but the road to success leads via a Project Manager (PM) who’s got the necessary organizational skills and can maneuver the development team for your project to come to life.

 

Turn to an established IT company. Let them commit to doing everything for you from A to Z. 

 

You’ll still be involved, but the whole process will be under the control of your PM. Meanwhile, you can focus on developing your business and finding additional investors. Let the experienced team make it happen for you!

 

 

 

Best Software Development Models & Methodologies

A good software creation process should be straightforward and lightweight. In practice, a streamlined software development process requires effort and time both from the client’s and development teams’ sides.

 

Thankfully, people have already created explanatory process models that aid greatly in seeing this process from a bird's eye view.

 

For starters, what is a process model? These models are also known as Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC) models/methodologies. Each has its own distinctions, pros, and cons.

 

Still, their common purpose is to organize project management and enable teams to  produce high-quality software as quickly and cost-effectively as possible.

 

For our purposes here, we’ll examine the main SDLC methodologies, their pros and cons, and help you decide which model is best for your software development process.

 

Read also: How to Scale a Software Development Team

 

1. Waterfall Model

This model underscores the necessity of a logical progression of steps during the software development lifecycle (SDLC).

 

Just as you would step down the path near the rapid waters of a cascading waterfall, your team would step further with each successive phase of the software development. This provides a sense of direction. You know your team’s progress and where it will be over time.

Pros:

 

• It’s well-structured, easy to understand, and simple to manage.
• It defines goals and deadlines clearly and facilitates planning. 

 

Cons:

 

• Inflexibility. With minimal room for review and revisions, the developers won’t be able to solve issues until the product is in the maintenance stage.
• An early delay can cause the project duration to exceed the planned time frame with detrimental consequences.

 

Best suited for:

The Waterfall doesn’t work well for long-term and ongoing projects that require flexibility. However, it works well for smaller projects with set requirements.

 

 

 

2. The Agile Model

The Agile model is a worthy alternative to the waterfall model. It’s often praised as the best model for software development among many developers and business owners due to its facilitation of a smoother check-up process to reassess the software plan. The concept of this model is “customer satisfaction.”

 

The entire software process is divided into several repeated cycles. Every iteration phase is under the constant scrutiny of a team of professionals. Customer satisfaction is achieved by enabling the client to check a demonstration of each process cycle from the requirements to the final product stage.

You can try several Agile frameworks. For example, Scrum facilitates software product development or services with particular attention to continual delivery without overstraining the development team.

 

The Scrum Agile model introduced the concept of the minimum viable product (MVP). This software product version has just enough features to satisfy the early users’ needs and quickly receive their feedback, directing further product development.

 

The Kanban system and task boards are Agile project management tools for coordinating project teams’ tasks that help decrease friction and increase effectiveness. A Kanban board helps visualize work at various phases of the work process at a personal and organizational level.

Pros: 

 

• Lower cost
• Fast releases
• Spotting defects and making changes fast throughout the development process
• Improving the software product according to the stakeholders’ early and consistent feedback and decisions throughout the process
• Greater project transparency and more effective communication between the teams and stakeholders

 

Cons:

 

• Lack of comprehensive documentation that may cause confusion and issues in the future
• Risk of goal focus shifting
• Less predictability and clarity regarding issues, deadlines, costs, and profits
• Risk of slow development due to stakeholders’ reluctance to provide timely feedback 

 

Best suited for:

The Agile model is best suited for projects where requirements are expected to change or evolve frequently. It is particularly well-suited for dynamic and complex environments where adaptability and flexibility are crucial. 

 

Learn more: How to optimize your offshore team communication in Agile projects

 

 3. Lean Model

Toyota first used Lean production practices and principles to reduce waste and inefficiency in the production area. Any Lean transformation aims to improve the entire organization’s health by optimizing its people, effort, resources, and energy toward creating value for the customer.

 

The seven Lean principles are:

 

1.  eliminate waste (the non-value-added components in any process)
2.  emphasize constant learning
3.  decide as late as possible
4.  deliver as fast as possible
5.  empower the team
6.  build up integrity
7.  see the whole picture

 

The Lean methodology is focused on continuous improvement and respect for people. All employees are called on to improve services and provide value with less effort continually. It also means optimizing operations and supporting processes for all critical applications and services.

 

The Lean software model has also embraced the idea of stream maps to eliminate waste due to duplicate effort and inefficient processes. Lean value stream mapping enables companies to see how their value flows in various functions and then decide on what brings the most customer satisfaction.

Pros:

 

• A streamlined approach allows for faster delivery and improvements, shorter time-to-market, and cost reduction.
• Eliminating waste minimizes the risk of developing superfluous features and improves quality.
• Increased team flexibility, efficient communication, collaboration, and decision-making result in better quality.

 

Cons:

 

• Comprehensive documentation is required, while its excessive flexibility may lead to the team losing track of the initial goal.
• Heavily dependent on the team’s cohesion and individual members’ contributions, the Lean process is less scalable than other methodologies.

 

Best suited for:

The Lean software development model is best suited for projects prioritizing efficiency, continuous improvement, and waste reduction. Originating from manufacturing principles, Lean focuses on delivering value to the customer while minimizing resources, time, and unnecessary processes.

 

Read Also: How to speed up software development

 

4. DevOps Model

The DevOps methodology emerged from two trends: the application of Agile and Lean methodologies by operations teams. The emphasis here is on valuing the cooperation between the development and operations personnel throughout the SDLC.

 

In a DevOps model, the developers and operations teams collaborate closely — sometimes as one team — to hasten innovation and the delivery of higher-quality and more reliable software products and functionalities. DevOps automation follows CI (continuous integration) and CD (continuous delivery) principles.

 

There are small but frequent updates to the product. The hallmarks are discipline, continuous feedback, and process enhancement.

 

 

DevOps is also criticized for prioritizing speed over security and regarding security for CI/CD as a separate affair. DevSecOps, an augmentation of DevOps, takes a more holistic approach, allowing for security practices integration into every phase of the software development process. 

 

These are the most popular software development models and methodologies currently. The graph below shows that software engineers tend to mix and combine them.

Image source

 

Pros:

 

• Shorter development cycles, rapid adjustments, and automation significantly speed up product delivery.
• Close collaboration of development and operations teams and testing automation help enhance the software quality.
• Automation also helps reduce the expenses.

 

Cons:

 

• DevOps implementation requires integrating various tools and techniques, which requires significant budget allocation, complicates management and troubleshooting, and creates confusion.
• Recruiting experienced DevOps professionals may be challenging.

 

Best suited for:

DevOps is a cultural and collaborative approach to software development and IT operations that emphasizes communication, collaboration, and integration between development and operations teams.

 

The DevOps model is best suited for environments where rapid and frequent software releases are necessary, and there is a strong emphasis on automation, collaboration, and continuous delivery.

 

5.  Incremental development model

The incremental development model is a type of SDLC where the software is developed in small, iterative cycles. Each cycle builds upon the previous one until the software is complete.

 

Without a full specifications document, project teams work on implementing a set of known software requirements in 2- to 4-week sprints. After that, they perform testing and evaluation and then pinpoint further requirements.

 

Each iteration or phase produces a new version of the software. There’s plenty of enhancing and repeating until the final product is ready.

Pros:

 

• You can have a working product version early on in the process.

 

• Higher flexibility, continuous flow of feedback and collaboration, faster problem identification, and better alignment with customer needs improve output. 

 

• Data from multiple past development cycles helps plan future cycles and use resources more efficiently.

 

• It’s less expensive to implement changes.

 

• Reduced risk of project failure.

 

Cons:

 

• Increased risk of scope creep.
• Frequent repetitions take up resources quickly.
• Tech debt may be overlooked and built up until it becomes a problem.
• Lack of documentation through iterations may cause issues afterward. 

 

Best suited for:

This methodology can be used by any organization that needs to develop software applications, whether for internal use or sale to customers. However, it is particularly well suited for large or complex projects that would be difficult to complete using other methods. 

 

Additionally, this approach can benefit organizations that need constant changes or updates to their software applications, as each increment can be easily modified without affecting the rest of the project.

 

6. Prototyping

A prototype is a version of a system developed quickly to see if the customer is happy with it. The stakeholders’ involvement in the development process increases the chances that they will accept the final product earlier.

  

The following phases of a prototyping process are distinguished:

Pros:

 

• Prototyping helps eliminate misunderstandings and miscommunications, improves product specifications, and increases project predictability.
• It helps improve product quality, save costs, and reduce the risk of project failure.

 

Cons:

 

• Focusing on a limited prototype, developers risk overlooking better solutions.

 

Best suited for:

Prototyping is helpful when the customer or software developers are not 100% sure about a design’s feasibility, product requirements, algorithms, business rules, etc.

 

7. Spiral Method

The Spiral model is more complex than other flexible SDLC methodologies. It’s considered a useful development model that could assist in a more precise risk handling of your optimal software development organizational structure. The spiral model depicted in the diagram below is a spiral with many coils:

Pros:

 

• You can have a working product early in the software life cycle.
• The model facilitates risk analysis and risk handling at every iteration.
• Flexibility in requirements is combined with solid approval and documentation control.

 

Cons:

 

• The process highly depends on risk analysis and requires excessive documentation.
• The unlimited number of phases makes time estimation, defining realistic milestones, and release planning very difficult.

 

Best suited for:

Being expensive, the Spiral model is unsuitable for small projects and mainly applies to large, complex, high-risk projects. It allows development teams to include user feedback early on and create a highly customized product.

 

 

Our Experience In Software Development

The Onix software development process is flexible and adaptable, allowing us to work with our clients in a way that suits their specific needs. We understand that every business is different and tailor our approach to each project.

The first step in our process is the Project Discovery Stage. We take the time to learn about the client’s business, their goals, and what they need the software to do. This information forms the basis of our solution design.

 

Once we have a clear understanding of the requirements, we start to develop the solution. We use various techniques and tools to create high-quality software that meets clients' needs.

 

Throughout the development process, we keep the client updated on our progress. We also provide regular feedback so they can see how the software is progressing.

 

Once the software is complete, we test its final version to ensure it meets all the requirements. Once the client is happy with the software, we deploy it and provide support as needed.

 

Onix has extensive experience in software development. We have delivered successful solutions to clients in a variety of industries. 

 

 

Conclusion

There is no such thing as “the best model in software engineering” that suits everyone. This post covers only seven common software development models, each with benefits and disadvantages.

 

It’s up to your product development team to decide which software model is best for your project, depending on your unique needs and goals. 

 

At Onix, we use several SDLC methodologies, but projects are often completed using more flexible models (i.e., Agile-based Scrum and Kanban and Lean development).

 

Gathering a good team of professionals who will propel your project through every iteration is equally important. We offer you the best IT engineers to realize your ideas. Contact us today — we’ll be happy to help!

 

FAQ

 

Which software model is most popular?

In 2022, nearly 47% of surveyed software developers reported using a DevOps or DevSecOps method for software development. 86% of software development teams reportedly used Agile in 2021. 

 

Which SDLC model is best suited to large and complex projects? 

The Spiral model is a good choice for long-term projects where large systems and innovative solutions are developed. 

 

Which software model is the best choice for fixed-price projects?

The Waterfall model is most suitable for contracts with precise specifications, timelines, deliverables, and budgets.

 

Can I mix and match different software development models and methodologies?

Yes. Some models are hybrids, like the Spiral model combining the Waterfall and Prototyping methods. There’s also a way to apply the Waterfall model and Agile to the same projects.

 

Developers basically go through a Waterfall phase until they get to coding using Scrum and then apply the Waterfall principles to infrequent releases. This controversial method, called hybrid Agile or Water-Scrum-Fall, is practiced by 28% of software engineers.