Pre-development phases of the SDLC

Before the first line of code is written, there is the potential for a fair amount of thought and work going into a project. Not all of the work is going to be visible by the time development starts, and, realistically, not all of what could be produced pre-development will be, in many cases. Even those artifacts that are created may not have any formal structure or documentation around them, or may not be as complete or detailed as might be desired. Despite all of that, knowing what might be available that is of use or interest during development can at least help answer questions that can arise during the actual writing-of-code portion of a system/project.