>I am running into the phrase 'life-cycle ' in terms of
>applications. I can imagine what this means but I am
>not sure. What does the term life cycle refer?

For my agency, an application or system life-cycle is roughly:

1) Charter or contract
2) Requirements (high, then detailed)
3) Design (same)
4) Programming
5) Testing
6) Implementation
7) Ongoing maintenance and enhancements (we don't explicitly mention bug-fixing, of course :)))