The main objective of Rapid Application Development is to avoid extensive pre-planning, generally allowing software to be written much faster and making it easier to change requirements.
Rapid Application Development Model (RAD Model) is a linear sequence of the software development process model where we focus a very short development cycle by using a component based construction approach.
When organizations adopt rapid development methodologies, care must be taken to avoid role and responsibility confusion and communication breakdown within the development team, and between the team and the client.
To facilitate rapid development, strong emphasis was placed on the idea of software re-use. The notion of software components began to be nurtured.
ADVANTAGES OF RAPID APPLICATION DEVELOPMENT(RAD)
- It increases speed of developing software. It can be achieved using methods like rapid prototyping, virtualization of system related routines, the use of CASE tools and other techniques.
- Re-usability of components help to speed up development.
- It increases the quality.
- Some systems also deliver advantages of interoperability, extensibility, and portability.
- It incorporates short development cycles.
- Promotes strong collaborative atmosphere and dynamic gathering of requirements.
DISADVANTAGES OF RAPID APPLICATION DEVELOPMENT(RAD)
- Unknown cost of product.
- Difficult to commit the time required for success of the RAD process.
- Short iteration may not add enough functionality, leading to significant delays in final iterations.
- Early RAD systems faces reduced scalability occurs because a RAD developed application starts as a prototype and evolves into a finished application.
- Early RAD systems have reduced features that occur due to time boxing, where features are pushed to later versions in order to finish a release in a short amount of time.
- Dependency on strong cohesive teams and individual commitment to the project.
