Salesforce Development Lifecycle: Everything You Need to Know

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3 days ago
5 min read

If you think Salesforce is just a CRM, think again. Salesforce has now become much more than just a CRM. For growing businesses, Salesforce is the backbone of customer operations, sales processes, marketing workflows, and even internal collaboration. But simply using Salesforce isn’t enough. To make it truly work for your business, it takes strategy, structure, and the right development approach. That’s where the Salesforce Development Lifecycle (SDLC) comes in.

This lifecycle is not just a technical checklist. It’s a step-by-step approach that keeps your Salesforce environment clean, functional, and aligned with your business needs.

If you want Salesforce to actually support your goals – whether it’s automating tasks, improving customer experiences, or scaling operations then understanding the Salesforce Development Lifecycle (SDLC) is non-negotiable.

It makes your Salesforce performance stand out rather than just a tangled system full of costly errors, delays, and limitations. In fact, the Salesforce market controls a major portion of the CRM market with a market share of around 21.8%.

However, many businesses aren’t aware of the Salesforce development lifecycle. No worries!

In this guide, we will understand everything about the Salesforce development lifecycle, its stages, models, benefits, challenges to overcome and tools required to manage this lifecycle.

By the end of this guide, you’ll know exactly the importance of the Salesforce development lifecycle and how to keep your CRM working efficiently and get the most value from it.

What is Salesforce Development?

Salesforce development refers to the process of customizing and extending the functionality of the Salesforce platform to meet the unique needs of your business. Whether you want to maximize efficiencies in your internal operations, improve customer management, or link Salesforce with other applications, it is a development that makes it happen.

Several Salesforce development tools, such as Apex, Visualforce and the Salesforce Lightning Platform, allow developers to create just about anything from custom apps, user interfaces, automated workflows, and even connections to other applications from third parties.

They help your business operate in the best way it needs, instead of having to change the way your business operates based on how the software works to fit the needs you require.

Salesforce allows for more flexibility than off-the-shelf CRM solutions. It will enable organizations to have a greater chance of transforming their processes without ripping everything out and doing everything from square one.

However, to maximize value and the overall endeavour, it is important to follow a clearly defined development lifecycle from planning to maintenance, making sure the result truly works for your needs.

Salesforce Development Lifecycle

The Salesforce Application Development is a structured approach to assist teams in planning, building, testing, and delivering applications on the Salesforce platform. Here are six main stages for a successful Salesforce solution. Let’s examine what’s included in each stage:

Stage 1. Prepare the Development Plan

Every successful Salesforce project starts with a solid plan of action. Before you develop any code or do any configuration, the first consideration is to define what is being developed and what it is intended to do.

This may involve identifying business requirements and potential roadblocks and ensuring all parties involved – product manager/developer/admin/executives are on the same page.

In this phase:

Discuss the project idea with your team or Salesforce consulting partner
Involve product managers and business stakeholders to gather insights
Choose between configuration (using built-in tools) or customization (writing code)
Make sure your tools, sandboxes, and access permissions are ready to go

The better your plan, the smoother everything else goes.

Stage 2: Start Building

Now that the plan is ready, it is time to begin development. Depending on your needs, developers might use point-and-click tools like Flow Builder or write custom code using Apex or Lightning Components.

Some common tools at this stage include:

Custom Object Wizard
Developer Console
Visual Studio Code
Salesforce CLI

The work is usually done in a sandbox environment, a safe copy of your Salesforce org that doesn’t affect live data. This lets your team build and test freely without risking any disruption to your actual business operations.

Stage 3. Test the Build

After development, every part of the app should be carefully tested to make sure it performs well and is free from bugs.

In this stage:

Test each feature in the same sandbox environment
Keep testing isolated from ongoing development
Use both automated and manual testing methods to check for accuracy, performance, and security

Make sure everything works well before moving to the next step.

Stage 4. Build the Release Package

Once the features are developed and tested, it is time to organize and prepare to deploy! This means reviewing the changes and grouping them as a bundle that is ready to move into staging or production.

At this point, your team:

Packages all customizations and updates into a release artefact
Verifies everything is included and correctly linked
Gets ready for a complete system test in a production-like environment

This step is all about ensuring the release is complete, clean, and organized before moving forward.

Stage 5. Test the Final Release

Before releasing it live, it is important to test your entire app in a staging environment similar to the production environment. Testing in a staging environment will also allow you to simulate the real-world environment and detect additional unexpected bugs.

During this phase:

Connect the staging environment to any external systems (e.g., payment platforms, third-party tools)
Use real sample data to test integrations and performance
Run regression testing, performance testing, and integration testing
Invite a small group of real users or stakeholders to perform User Acceptance Testing (UAT) and provide feedback

This phase helps validate that your app is not only functional but also ready for real-world use.

Stage 6. Release to Production

Now comes the final step, launching your app into your live Salesforce environment.

To ensure a smooth rollout:

Make sure your team is familiar with the changes and how they’ll impact daily operations
Provide any needed documentation or training
Consider setting up a training environment with real-time data if the update will significantly affect user workflows

Once the deployment is complete, monitor everything closely to ensure stability and quickly address any user concerns.

Salesforce Development Models

Salesforce development models are different approaches that teams use to plan, build, test, and deploy apps or features in Salesforce. There are two main models businesses typically choose from:

1. Org Development Model

This model is for teams that want flexibility and control while handling changes in Salesforce. We can bring in any source control system (such as Git) which will store all of your code and configuration changes in one place.

This also helps everyone remain on the same page and track what has been changed, who did it and when.

Why it’s useful:

Keeps development and production environments aligned
It makes it easy to track who made what changes and when
It helps developers work faster across different stages like development, testing, and release.
Reduces manual effort by avoiding repetitive change sets
Works well with tools like Salesforce Extensions for VS Code, which simplify retrieving metadata, storing it in source control, and deploying automatically

The Org Development Model gives your team a more organized and reliable way to handle multiple releases and updates.

2. Package Development Model

The Package Development Model can work best for larger Salesforce projects that are more complicated and encompass more than one developer working on different components of the project at the same time.

It organizes the project into more manageable “packages.” Each package is essentially a small module, which makes it easier to manage updates, test changes, and deploy features when the package is ready without affecting everything else in your project.

Why it’s useful:

Improves teamwork and reduces conflicts between developers
Helps manage changes more clearly and predictably
Supports automated testing and continuous integration (CI)
It helps with better version control and faster releases
Features that improve version control and change tracking
Speeds up release cycles by keeping development modular
It makes it easier to see exactly what’s changing in your production environment