Senior IT staff has determined that a new product will be hosted in the cloud and will support web and mobile users. Developers will need to deliver…

The scenario describes activities central to the Design phase of the Software Development Lifecycle (SDLC). In this phase, developers and architects translate the requirements into a blueprint for building the system. Key decisions are made about the system's architecture (cloud hosting), the components to be developed (REST services, web application, mobile apps), and the technologies to be used. The act of "determining how to deliver each part" is the essence of design, where the structure and implementation strategy are defined before coding begins.

A. Maintenance: This phase occurs after the software is deployed and focuses on fixing bugs, applying patches, and making minor enhancements, not initial product planning.

B. End of life: This is the final phase where a product is retired and decommissioned. The scenario describes the creation of a new product.

C. Deployment: This phase involves releasing the completed and tested software into the production environment for end-users, which happens after design and development.

1. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). (2008). Security Considerations in the System Development Life Cycle (Special Publication 800-64 Rev. 2).

Section 3.2.2, Design Phase, Page 11: "During this phase, the system is designed to meet the functional and security requirements identified in the initiation phase... This phase includes determining how the system will meet the functional requirements... and developing the security architecture for the system." This directly corresponds to the scenario's description of determining how to deliver the product's components.

2. Sommerville, I. (2016). Software Engineering (10th ed.). Pearson.

Chapter 4, Section 4.1, Architectural design decisions: This section explains that the design process involves identifying the major components of the system and their relationships. It states, "Architectural design is a creative process where you design a system organization that will satisfy the functional and non-functional requirements of a system." This aligns with deciding on a cloud-hosted architecture with web, mobile, and REST components.

3. MIT OpenCourseWare. (2018). 6.033 Computer System Engineering, Spring 2018.

Lecture 1: Introduction, Section "The system design problem": The lecture materials describe system design as the process of defining the architecture, modules, interfaces, and data for a system to satisfy specified requirements. The activities in the prompt—choosing a cloud platform and defining the structure of web, mobile, and service components—are fundamental design tasks.