Agile Modeling and Prototyping

This chapter explores agile modeling, which is a collection of innovative, user-centered approaches to systems development. You will learn the values and principles, activities, resources, practices, processes, and tools associated with agile methodologies. Agile approaches have their roots in prototyping, so this chapter begins with prototyping to provide a proper context for understanding, and then […]

Prototyping: Kinds of Prototypes

As the systems analyst presenting a prototype of the information system, you are keenly interested in the reactions of users and management to the prototype. You want to know in detail how they react to working with the prototype and how good the fit is between their needs and the prototyped features of the system. […]

Developing a Prototype: Guidelines

Prototyping is a superb way to elicit feedback about the proposed system and about how readily it is fulfilling the information needs of its users, as depicted in the figure illustrated below. The first step of prototyping is to estimate the costs involved in building a module of the system. If costs of programmers’ and […]

Users’ Role in Prototyping

The users’ role in prototyping can be summed up in two words: honest involvement. Without user involvement there is little reason to prototype. The precise behaviors necessary for interacting with a prototype can vary, but it is clear that the user is pivotal to the prototyping process. Realizing the importance of the user to the […]

Rapid Application Development (RAD)

Rapid application development (RAD) is an object-oriented approach to systems development that includes a method of development as well as software tools. It makes sense to discuss RAD and prototyping in the same chapter, because they are conceptually very close. Both have as their goal the shortening of time typically needed in a traditional SDLC […]