Li Hui
Sullivan University
HCA 535: Healthcare Information System
November 15, 2013
Introduction With hardware and software evolving during the last decades, three major systems development techniques have been developed to support different organization needs. The three major methodologies are SDLC (system Development Life Cycle), JAD (Joint Application Development) and RAD (Rapid Application Development). Depends on situation, such as technology, economics, and organizational issues, different approaches will be appreciated. This article will analysis advantages and disadvantages of each methodologies. In addition, it gives recommendation for the given scenario, according to critical and summary analysis about the three methodologies. (Osborn, 1995).
Critical Analysis of SDLC, JAD, RAD
At the time SDLC is widely used, company put all focus on whether the details of transactions are fully captured and how dependable accounting systems are. SDLC is designed for mainframe data base system. However, among these three methodologies, SDLC is the most time and energy consuming one. It also falls to have “flexibility to match system development speed to process redesign efforts” (Osborn, p. 10). JAD is designed to build systems “that could capture corporate information in flexible, reusable data structures” (Osborn, p. 7). Unlike SDLC acquire formal description and approvals, JAD puts more emphasis on modeling signoff, the modeling approach meets the new need of functional corporate data infrastructure, providing data control, distribution and architecture design. However, the complexity and time-consuming of modeling process “make this task is handled with a delegation/ reporting/negotiation/approval cycle, leading to many of the pitfalls of SDLC” (Osborn, p. 6). RAD emerged when companies tend to build more client and server friendly applications. It use working prototype instead of formal documents or modeling approach, which enable “third party tools for both design and for code generation” (Osborn, p. 8). Compare with the other two methodologies, RAD “builds interfaces and roll prototypes into production code at speed and under acceptable control” (Osborn, p. 10), which is one of the biggest advantages of RAD. However, it “provides neither the control needed to build large transaction systems nor the tools and time needed to implement board infrastructure” (Osborn, p. 10).
Brief Summary of SDLC, JAD, RAD Each of these methodologies has their own characteristics, but they are all connected in some ways. Mainframe is hardware support for SDLC. While by the time JAD showed up, minicomputer is the hardware new trend. RAD is developed when workstation and PCs becoming new hardware supports. Each of them emerges because of hardware trends evolves. From SDLC to RAD, business process focus become more and more unstructured, and technical focus