Sunday, September 23, 2012

How To Accomplish Timely Delivery On Projects With 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.

Generally the changing nature of user needs requires an approach that can equally match the demand. Such a methodology must be able to quickly deliver a software product before the user need expires. This speedy production approach entails a number of characteristics.

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.

Most importantly and within this approach of software development is the aspect of time. Therefore every component of the project is allocated a duration in which it must be accomplished. At times when this period is exceeded the project team has the option of discarding that particular unit.

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.

Generally software projects base on cost and time apart from quality to measure their levels of success. Therefore whatever is used must enable the software developers to balance between these three factors which is especially the case for large software projects. The objective is to deliver a product whose need still exists.

Comparatively the traditional approaches in software production had many shortcomings. For one using a rigid method like the waterfall was likely to deliver a product a little too late. This is because of its rigid nature that is insensitive to the ever changing needs of the user.

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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