Drawbacks of Rapid Application Development
- It requires multiple teams or a large number of people to work on scalable projects.
- This model requires heavily committed developers and customers. If commitment is lacking then RAD projects will fail.
- The projects using the RAD model require heavy resources.
- If there is no appropriate modularization then RAD projects fail. Performance can be a problem for such projects.
- The projects using the RAD model find it difficult to adopt new technologies.
Rapid application development model (RAD) – Software Engineering
The Rapid Application Development Model was first proposed by IBM in the 1980s. The RAD model is a type of incremental process model in which there is an extremely short development cycle. When the requirements are fully understood and the component-based construction approach is adopted then the RAD model is used. Various phases in RAD are Requirements Gathering, Analysis and Planning, Design, Build or Construction, and finally Deployment.
Table of Content
- When to use the RAD Model?
- Objectives of Rapid Application Development Model (RAD)
- Advantages of Rapid Application Development Model (RAD)
- Disadvantages of Rapid application development model (RAD)
- Applications of Rapid Application Development Model (RAD)
- Drawbacks of Rapid Application Development
The critical feature of this model is the use of powerful development tools and techniques. A software project can be implemented using this model if the project can be broken down into small modules wherein each module can be assigned independently to separate teams. These modules can finally be combined to form the final product. Development of each module involves the various basic steps as in the waterfall model i.e. analyzing, designing, coding, and then testing, etc. as shown in the figure. Another striking feature of this model is a short period i.e. the time frame for delivery(time-box) is generally 60-90 days.
Multiple teams work on developing the software system using the RAD model parallelly.
The use of powerful developer tools such as JAVA, C++, Visual BASIC, XML, etc. is also an integral part of the projects. This model consists of 4 basic phases:
- Requirements Planning – This involves the use of various techniques used in requirements elicitation like brainstorming, task analysis, form analysis, user scenarios, FAST (Facilitated Application Development Technique), etc. It also consists of the entire structured plan describing the critical data, methods to obtain it, and then processing it to form a final refined model.
- User Description – This phase consists of taking user feedback and building the prototype using developer tools. In other words, it includes re-examination and validation of the data collected in the first phase. The dataset attributes are also identified and elucidated in this phase.
- Construction – In this phase, refinement of the prototype and delivery takes place. It includes the actual use of powerful automated tools to transform processes and data models into the final working product. All the required modifications and enhancements are to be done in this phase.
- Cutover – All the interfaces between the independent modules developed by separate teams have to be tested properly. The use of powerfully automated tools and subparts makes testing easier. This is followed by acceptance testing by the user.
The process involves building a rapid prototype, delivering it to the customer, and taking feedback. After validation by the customer, the SRS document is developed and the design is finalized.