What is Rapid Application Development?

Rapid Application Development is not something new, it has been there since the 1990s but has been relatively unpopular until the past decade. Speed is the requirement of every business today, and the RAD model of application development, as the name suggests, results in faster development in comparison to the traditional Waterfall Method.

The?Rapid Application Development?Model allows developers to make frequent iterations to the software based on the feedback received from the client rapidly, and make changes and updates to the existing,?development application?without starting from scratch each time to make a change as it is with the Waterfall Method. The waterfall method of application development doesn’t allow for changes once the software has moved into the testing phase and consequently a less evolved software is delivered to the client.

Rapid Application Development is a feedback-centric approach to software development. It focuses on collecting customer feedback at every step of the development process and unlike traditional methods of development where customers are required to send in all of their requirements at the start of the development, the customer is actively involved throughout the development process in the RAD model.

Phases of?Rapid?Application Development Model

A typical Rapid Application Development cycle consists of four phases:

1. Defining Requirements

In the first step of Rapid Application Development, much like scoping in a traditional development cycle, the customer is asked for a broad set of requirements. Requirements include their vision of the application, expectations, time frames, budgets, etc.

2. Prototyping

Once the requirements have been set out, more like the project scope, the developers move on to the development of a working prototype application with just enough features and functions as fast as possible. This prototype design is developed according to the requirements stated in the first phase.

3. Rapid Development and Feedback gathering

In this stage, rapid application development takes place in full swing. Since most of the customer concerns and feedback are addressed during the Prototyping stage, the development takes place faster than a traditional development process.

4. Implementation

In this final phase of the Rapid Application Development, the application is moved on to a live environment and the final launch of the application takes place. Full-scale testing begins in this stage to identify any product bugs.

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