Introduction

Before beginning the process of developing our application we need to decide on a development method so that we spend our time as efficiently as possible. Due to the structure of this project and the fact that it is necessary to development using an incremental process we will be looking at the following development methods: spiral development, rapid application development and agile development.

Spiral Development is focused around repeating the same four steps until the project reaches the desirable state whether this be a working proof of concept or ready for deployment. The four steps that it focuses on are:

Determine the objective of this iteration (based on the requirements), and any constraints which are going to be placed on this iteration.
Identify and evaluate any alternative approaches to how to iteration could be carried out.
Develop and verify the deliverables based on the objectives set in the first step, until all have been completed.
Evaluate the development of this first iteration and begin planning the next iteration going back to the first step.

Rapid application development is mainly focused on rapid development of prototypes with the planning interleaved with the writing of the program or software, planning specifics per each section of the codebase, the steps that it focuses on after determining the requirements are as follows:

Create preliminary data models and interface mappings.
Start the creation of a prototype which verifies the requirements being worked on utilizing the data models and mappings for the interface.
Repeat these stages until the software is a working proof of concept or ready for deployment.

Agile Development describes a set of principles for team contribution to an iterative project. It can be used as an umbrella term for a set of methods which can be used to optimise team contribution, where iterating through the software development process. The method that we have decided to look at is one of the most popular methods call scrum. Scrum is a framework which allows software to be developed under a feedback driven empirical approach. It is based upon the three pillars of transparency, inspection, and adaptation for all parties involved which mainly focus around 4 centre roles:

The scrum master is in charge of making sure that the development team faces no obstacles or distractions to each increment (or sprint).
The development team is in charge of fulfilling their hired role and delivering each increment of the software improving upon the last increment.
The product owner represents the client and the voice of any other customers who define and agree upon the requirements which have to be met at the end of the development process, but also offer a guiding influence on new ideas or more ideal changes per sprint.

Conclusion

We have decided on using agile development as all of the group members want to maintain a level of flexibility in the development process being able to make changes as needs arise, and being able to show the project in stages to our client and make progress based of all the feedback we get.

Development Methods

Introduction

Conclusion

References