Rapid Application Development (RAD) & Project Management

Spending several years as a technical project manager in Corporate America, I used Rapid Application Development (RAD) on many technical projects. RAD is a process used to encourage user interaction through the use of prototypes as an application project is being developed. Now as a website developer, I may use RAD on many projects because this process is helpful when working on projects where I have a non-technical client.

According to Tom Mochal of TechRepublic.com (Examining the life cycle of a RAD project), below are simple steps that can be use when applying RAD to a project.

• Planning: plan the work first
• Analysis: capture the business requirements
• Prototyping: Utilize the requirements you received in the previous step to build a high-level prototype of the application
• Repeat analysis and prototyping as necessary: When you’ve completed the initial prototype, you can use it to gather additional, more detailed business requirements from the customer
• Conclusion of prototyping: project manager and customer need to agree on a fixed number of prototyping iterations or else this cyclical process could go on forever
• Implementation

Wow, that’s a mouth full so to further explain, I decided to include a scenario applying the above steps to a simple process. The scenario are simple steps that can be taken to develop a website.

• Planning: meet with client to determine project scope
• Analysis: review scope to determine groups of tasks that need to be completed
• Prototyping: create sample design and website layout for content for initial approval
• Repeat analysis and prototyping as necessary
• Conclusion of prototyping: make sure to determine a time period and timeline for the project so that you can establish an end date for develop so that the project can be implemented
• Implementation: once website development is completed, make the website live

What are you thoughts about RAD and how you can use it to apply to your business processes? Please feel free to share your experience or feedback.

Image courtesy of:  http://Softpedia.com