Can someone identify the name of this product development cycle?

Question

I've googled this on several occasions but have not found an answer to this. In our office project, we work on software development and testing. We use the following terms:

1. Docking: The time when the developers are going to stop working on the code and hand it over the testers for extensive testing
2. IT Builds / IT Testing: I'm not sure what this means exactly. "Internal Trial"?
3. GA Builds/GA Testing: I think this is the release to world.

I'm trying to get a name for this software process that includes "docking days". I know that we're using Agile but I'm not familiar with these terminologies. Moreover, I've googled extensively for these terms and apart from "GA" I don't get much answers.

Can someone please identify the name of this process? Also, can someone please point me to some books/articles that talk about these terms in detail? I'm trying to gain an in-depth understanding of our software processes.

Answer 1

This is a bit of a non-answer, but I think the easiest way to get to the bottom of where these terms come from is to ask your team. It's absolutely fine to ask for clarification when people use terms you're unfamiliar with.

Answer 2

There can be a number of terms for that phase in this area that may be applicable:

• shakedown
• proving
• hardening
• verification
• user acceptance

As for an term for the overall 'product development cycle' you are using?
The term 'product development cycle' is a good enough term for me. Specifics always vary anyway. But basically you develop code and tests and make sure they work.

My experience is that the specific term does not matter that much.
There is no canonical answer here to that.

I simply call the phase you mention as:

Quality Assurance and Testing

Don't be confused if someone says, for instance, 'but we do unit testing when we write the code', etc. That is true. This is more about the User Acceptance testing - however you define that. Is is true however that a separate 'quality assurance' function that operates 'after' the code is developed is becoming rarer and it is increasingly common for quality, automation, and engineers in those disciplines, to be embedded in the application development teams so that tests are truly written at a similar time to the code and knowledge is closely shared.