Before the focus can shift to the task of coding, the development environment should be chosen, configured and documented in the Developers Guide, or other supporting document. Some of these decisions will likely have been made earlier in the process, but now is the time to ensure everyone is on the same page and the choices are documented. The goal is to ensure new team members, future development teams, etc. have the information needed to set up a development environment, build the deployable unit, and verify the accuracy of the build. Some of the questions to answer are:

Other items to document include:

The SDLC is not meant to strictly control the low-level coding practices of each development team. What it does provide are some coding practices and techniques that are commonly used in the FSA to produce successful results. In addition to the recommended practices and techniques, development teams should also follow the FSA Reference Architecture to help ensure consistency across projects. Each team may set up internal practices and guidelines as needed where no FSA guideline exists.