IGCSE · Practice questions · The program development life cycle

Four stages.

Six original Cambridge-style questions on analysis, design, coding and testing, with mark-scheme style answers.

Original questions All questions on this page are original work, written in the Cambridge IGCSE style. They are not from past papers. They test the same concepts and skills the syllabus rewards.

Keep these straight

Name the stage, then the task.

Analysis: identify the problem and requirements; abstraction; decomposition.
Design: decomposition, structure diagrams, flowcharts, pseudocode.
Coding: write the program code; iterative testing of each part.
Testing: test the whole program with test data.

Recall

[4 marks]

State the four stages of the program development life cycle, in order.

Analysis. ✓
Design. ✓
Coding. ✓
Testing (all four in this order). ✓

Explain

[2 marks]

Explain what is meant by abstraction.

Removing (filtering out) details that are not needed to solve the problem. ✓
Keeping only the important / relevant details, so the problem is simpler to solve. ✓

Apply

[3 marks]

A cinema wants a program to sell tickets online. Using decomposition, identify three sub-problems the program could be split into.

Choose a film and show time. ✓
Choose seats / check seat availability. ✓
Take payment / produce an e-ticket (or any other sensible sub-problem, such as calculate the price). ✓

Recall

[3 marks]

Identify three methods that can be used in the design stage to plan a solution.

Structure diagrams. ✓
Flowcharts. ✓
Pseudocode. ✓

Explain

[2 marks]

Describe what happens during the coding stage.

The program code is written (in a programming language) from the design. ✓
Iterative testing: each module is tested as it is written, errors are corrected and it is tested again. ✓

Analysis

[3 marks]

For each task, state the stage of the life cycle in which it is carried out: (a) using boundary data on the finished program; (b) deciding the program must store a customer's email address; (c) drawing a structure diagram.

(a) Testing. ✓
(b) Analysis (identifying requirements). ✓
(c) Design. ✓

Mark this once you have attempted all six and checked your working. It records a Practiced badge on the topic and adds a one-time bonus. Revealing the solutions alone does not count.