Compare and Contrast common system analysis and design methodologies including the traditional waterfall, information engineering, object oriented, and rapid application development approaches

Running head : Compare and Contrast SDLC

Compare and Contrast SDLC Introduction

This focuses on the contrasting feature of common systems analysis and design methodologies taking into account waterfall model information engineering , object oriented and rapid application development

Systems analysis and design methodologies display a series of process models and techniques which can be used for constructing an information system . Several methods are employed for planning and building the system with different complexities and approach

The waterfall method of modeling an information system is a traditional approach which takes into

account all the steps for developing a product and is quite planned in approach . It takes into account the various steps such as planning , designing , coding and implementation . Once a step is completed the product jumps into another step to get shapes accordingly . It is quite planned in approach unlike to other methods (Hoffer , 2002

Information engineering is a technique which focuses on an organization 's information requirements and generic processes which are quite flexible for future changes . In contrast to waterfall model which involved method that did not take care much of the organization 's requirements but focused too much on the product development which makes it closed to changes , the former lays a good amount of emphasis to organization 's data

Rapid application development (RAD ) techniques reduce the time complexity of the waterfall methods by prototyping methods and other techniques . Unlike waterfall and information engineering methods it creates joint application development sessions to understand the user requirements better and decide on functionality for design and usability . In place , RAD addresses the above problems of not involving the users and makes sure that the stakeholders of the system are able to meet and discuss on all grounds including design and look and feel . RAD also encompasses methods which take care of the organizations current processes . The phased approach of RAD makes it unique to address the present and emergency requirements of the organization and segregating the entire system into sections for implementation . In other methods the information system is not broken into parts and developed as a whole . In comparison , RAD identifies the crucial components which the business requires urgently and develops them first and then takes care of other components in phased manner to complete the entire system

The object oriented approach makes the process modeling quite simpler in nature by constructing the objects which represents real life features It also brings forth data abstraction and encapsulation techniques . In comparison to other process models the organization 's data is given more importance with relation to its storage and security . The ability is also enhanced with the use of other object oriented features such as inheritance and polymorphism (Booch , 2003 . The reusability of the data and business processes is the prime feature of object oriented methods which makes it quite strong in comparison to other methods . In waterfall emphasis was more in modeling organizations processes , information engineering focuses on modeling organization 's data whereas object oriented methods envelope both...