Exercise 2 - Finding some common ground

Exercise 2: Finding some common ground

Describe the steps involved with the Rapid Evolutionary Prototyping Approach as it applies to developing a Web application. How is it related to agile development?

Rapid Evolutionary Prototyping is an iterative approach to software development which uses an initial prototype which has been created from requirements which have been gathered from the stakeholders, from this the prototype is then used in testing to further develop it. This approach is recommended for small projects and the study guide provided for this subject (Eustace, 2009) states there are two main phases which are:

Phase 1- Evolutionary application prototyping; and

Phase 2 – Implementation.

This is a very basic model, and obviously each of these phases may be further broken down into other phases. In terms of developing a web based application I would see that there at least five main phases to the approach. These are as follows:

Phase 1 -Gather requirements and data from stakeholders for the web application.

Phase 2 –Development and Implementation of the web application prototype based on requirements determined in Phase 1.

Phase 3 – Test and Validate the web application and get user/ stakeholder feedback.

Phase 4 – Iterate until the web application meets stakeholder needs.

Phase 5 – Implement the web application.

Agile development methods are a progression on the rapid evolutionary prototyping approach. Both Rapid Evolutionary Prototyping and Agile Development methods of development use rapid, frequent delivery of software to the user. Working closely with the stakeholders and constant quality communication are required in agile development and the rapid evolutionary prototyping approach. This is in contrast to software development methodologies that use a planned approach such as the waterfall model. As stated in Ince (2004) with the greater imperative for companies to develop products and services quickly, together with the infratsructure to support them the speed of development is critical to success. As such, these rapd application development methodologies may be used to gain competitive advantage.