Explain RPA SDLC

Robotic process automation, at its heart, is a type of software development and, as such, adheres to a standard organized procedure for the delivery of solutions just like any other product. The framework for delivering and carrying out automation is called the RPA lifecycle. It includes each stage a bot goes through, from selecting a job or business process to automating through deploying the bot in production and continuing to monitor it afterward.

RPA lifecycle management is the process of overseeing each stage of a bot's existence to make sure it provides the anticipated value to the organization. It offers a framework for process automation to guarantee that the bot is created to meet its needs. Additionally, it provides a segmented approach to guarantee that every stage of RPA delivery can be evaluated and enhanced to optimize execution and performance.

Different Stages of the RPA Lifecycle

There are seven stages in RPA development life cycle

• Identification of the business process for RPA development through analysis.

• Development process where we verify whether the given specification met.

• Performance of quality inspections throughout the testing phase.

• Bot deployment and upkeep− Bot deployment and upkeep.

Identifying RPA Candidates

During this phase, RPA stakeholders find business procedures and jobs that are amenable to automation. It is possible to find and create candidates by using process discovery, task mining, or process mining technologies.

Prioritization and Assessment

Business processes and tasks that are suitable for automation are evaluated and given a priority for design and development during the evaluation and prioritization phase. Technical viability is considered in the assessment. Assume, for instance, that the process or job calls for too many decisions to be taken or involves too many system interactions, increasing the complexity of the dependence. It might not be a good candidate for automation in that situation.

The potential business value of its automation will also be evaluated. Is it a task or procedure with a large volume? How much time will be saved by automating it as opposed to doing it by hand? Is it difficult to do well when done manually, and will automation produce higher−quality results?

The process of how automations enter the design and development pipeline and their priority are referred to as prioritization. Prioritization is often determined by the amount of effort needed to produce an automation and its potential commercial value.

Design

Design is a stage in the RPA lifecycle management process that entails describing and modeling the actual process or activity to be automated as well as mapping any dependencies the automation may have, such as the systems it interacts with or the rules that it must abide by.

The design phase gives the RPA developer a roadmap for understanding what needs to be automated. Design used to be completed and packaged in paper−based documents like PDDs (process design documents), but this method has proven to be error−prone, ushering in a new, digital approach.

Development

During the development stage of the RPA lifecycle, the RPA developer creates the bot in the RPA platform studio using the specifications and definition given during the design phase and enlisted by your automation programme.

In the development phase, the automation developer chooses the RPA tool and writes automation scripts in it. Although there are an incredible number of products on the market, UiPath, Blue Prism, and Automation Anywhere are the top 3 tools available right now. The previously prepared Process Definition Document is also used as a reference while creating the Automation Scripts. There may or may not be a requirement for coding, depending on the work to be automated and the type of automation necessary. However, there are a huge number of situations where you do not need any code at all.

Testing your built bot is the next step once it has been created.

Once more, employing a paper−based document like a PDD is not the best way to promote progress. Large BRDs, or business requirements documents, are no longer used in software design and delivery since they have long been shown to be useless and prone to rework.

Testing

The automated process is tested in this phase by the RPA developer or QA team in a testing or staging environment to make sure it runs and functions as intended.

Deployment

After testing is over, the bot is deployed in production and is used as intended by the orchestrator of the RPA tool.

Monitoring and Change Management

During the last phase of RPA lifecycle management, the bot is constantly watched over to gauge its performance and make sure it is operating error−free.

Bots are affected by any change to such systems since they depend on so many different systems and interact with them. A crucial phase of a bot's lifespan is change management. The ROI may be increased and a lot of value can be saved by proactive change management that can foresee and fix change before the bot makes mistakes.

RPA Lifecycle Management- Why is it Important?

RPA is obviously not a technology that can be used once and then left alone. RPA is just software that has been layered over other applications. Each bot interacts with a variety of systems and is influenced by any changes made to those systems.

The uptime of the bot and its capacity to consistently provide the value that RPA promises will be impacted by each phase of the RPA lifecycle. Subpar procedures at every level of the RPA lifecycle are the root cause of many of the current problems RPA initiatives are facing. To allow proactive change management, for instance, when a future update to a legacy system or legislation hits a bot, as it inevitably will, bots must be clearly connected and mapped to their dependencies. By doing this, it is made sure that the bot won't just break and remain dormant until its break is looked into, fixed, tested, and redeployed.

Fortunately, it doesn't have to be that way. With the correct technologies and the inclusion of some best practices to your RPA lifecycle management, you can quickly achieve improved RPA uptime and increased returns.