System Development Life Cycles Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 3250 words

System Development Life Cycles - Essay Example The plan addresses the modification of the product towards betterment of needs of the customer along with the delivery of additional features and functional enhancements. The incremental process model like other evolutionary approaches is iterative in nature but unlike prototyping, the incremental model focuses on the delivery of an operational product with each increment. (Pressman) Early increments are stripped down versions of the final product. Advantages: Incremental model is useful in the case when staffing is unavailable for a complete implementation by the business deadline established for the project. Increments can be planned to manage technical risks. Limitation: The whole project depends upon the "core product", and if in any case it is halted or bugged the whole system comes down. RAD Model (Rapid Application Development) Rapid Application Development Model emphasizes a short development cycle with a "high-speed" adaptation of the model. (Pressman) RAD achieves rapid development by using a component based construction approach. RAD employs tools, techniques, and methodologies designed to speed application development. (Stair, 2001) RAD employs extensive use of JAD (Joint Application Development) process for data collection and requirement analysis. Like waterfall model, RAD adapts the same approach of the phases. RAD supports "parallel working" on different systems. Advantages: The main benefit of RAD upon other models is its capability to finish the task in an efficient manner followed by an efficient speed because of its "parallel working" system. Each major function can be assigned to a...(Pressman) Early increments are stripped down versions of the final product. As the prototype or demo system is further defined, feedback is elicited from users (Harbison, 1997) Thus, the domain models, reference requirements, and reference architecture are continually validated. The prototype or demonstration system development process provides further validation of these requirements and models, and identifies needed refinements. It can be problematic in the situation where the customer after viewing the prototype considers it to be the final version, satisfies and demands a few more changes without analyzing upon the back end development complications. Iterative model is the actual implementation of Waterfall model, due to which it is termed as "mini waterfall model". The reason behind is simple as it implements waterfall process in various phases or chunks. While comparing different SDLC models with the traditional model, one can easily judge the variations followed by enhancements from time to time. The waterfall model is the oldest one, similarly the prototype and RAD models are the extensions of waterfall model, and finally the user-end model, which is the latest, and is an augmentation of the RAD and prototype model. Many