Thursday, September 27, 2012

Facts About RAD Rapid Application Development

By Patrice McCoy


The benefits of applying computer technology are many. Generally efficiency and productivity are characteristic of most of the processes that use this technology. Actualizing this requires a combination of software and hardware components. While the hardware is readily available it is the software component that actuates the application and hence requires a lot of customization. Such a growth process can be accomplished based on a numbers of approaches and techniques. One such form is the RAD rapid application development. This is a time critical software evolution approach.

It is obvious that the highly changeable product requirements by users demand a development process that is quick on product delivery. In this way the merchandise is not lagging behind on the user needs but is kept at par. Such an approach can speedily translate the product to suit the present user requirements. Such a methodology will imply various features that are particulate.

For one the process can be broken down into smaller and manageable units. Each of these units may define a particular module of the major system. This module will specifically fulfill a particular task. Furthermore each of these units must be developed within a specific time limit. In this way the whole project duration can be appropriately regulated based on user demand.

Particularly within software production such a consideration of time is important. Generally modules of the software product must be delivered within some specified time. The project team will determine this and in certain cases when the deadline elapses before a deliverable is achieved the affected module or unit may be discarded.

This time-boxed phases are assigned to teams comprising analysts and programmers. These people work to perfect and test the units assigned to them before submitting the same for integration to form the bigger system. Using such an approach effort can be maximized to speedily deliver a high quality software product.

The general consideration within such a discipline involves the time quality and cost. This consideration has been known to affect the success of any project. This is what most software developers consider when executing large software projects. It is imperative that a software product is released while the user need is still there.

Notably the rigid nature of most conventional approaches like the waterfall to building software products was their undoing. Using these traditional approaches resulted in products taking a long time before reaching the market. At times these products were released when it was too late when the user requirement had changed.

Considering that the cost of obsolesce is high in terms of effort and resources it became apparent that time critical approaches would be more preferable. Indeed using the RAD rapid application development approach delivers software products that are able to address the current user needs. This defines one of the significant objectives of software projects that must fit within the cost quality and time requirements. A product from this process when it is well executed is expected to meet the user need and hence fetch its value for money. In this way the developers and sponsors of the project will reap the profits. Apart from this a timely delivery will also affect other product features like usability and acceptability where a usable product is likely to be generally accepted by the user which relates to an increase in demand.




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