An Introduction to RAD

This document aims at introducing briefly to the readers the Rapid Application Development (RAD) methodology. Information covered in the document includes the essential aspects of RAD, the RAD task structure, roles involved in a RAD project and techniques that can be applied. After reading the document, it is expected the readers will have a general understanding of the methodology.

In short, RAD is a system development life cycle which seeks to deliver system faster and cheaper but still maintain high quality. A typical RAD life cycle consists of four stages, namely, the requirements planning stage, the user design stage, the rapid construction stage and the transition stage. However, to ensure that all RAD benefits can be enjoyed, the four essential aspects of "Tools", "Methodology", "People" and "Management" should be present.

"Tools" refer to powerful CASE tools that provide automation support for systems development. "Methodology" refers a complete list of tasks (like RAD) provided to ensure that no essential activity is overlooked, while techniques are fully documented to ensure that a task is performed in the proper way. (In the document, a number of techniques are briefly introduced including user workshop, facilitation, timebox management, parallel development, logical data modeling, business process modeling, function decomposition, interaction analysis, prototyping, cluster analysis, entity state analysis and event dependency analysis.)

"People" refer to those business and technical people involved in a RAD project. For business people, they must understand the business processes under study well whereas technical people must be very experienced in the technical platform chosen. Finally, regarding "Management", the project must be managed for speed through the use of techniques such as facilitated user workshops and timebox management.

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