a | ei PENINA faše ki dgeš posl a m ii -. Las ia ii vin Ne en ee o S S - Ki — z s el. 4 z " š ua 1 - In the attempt to create applications This 1s the faster, critical success factors for every first of a sertes IS department include: | of articles on 6 the speed of applications devel- rapic lica- opment; asa dzčelo - 0 the speed of applications mainte- ment (RAD),a nance; and methodology for ' the speed of cutover of new applica- development de- | tions. signed to be There are many diverse aspects to much faster achieving fast applications development. than the tradi- This series of articles discusses these tional life cycle. new approaches and shows how they One of the ur- gent; concerns in enterprises today is the need for information-systems (IS) organizations to create and modify applications faster than is possible with the traditional de- velopment life cycle. If applications take two or three years to build and the application back- log spans several years, businesses can- not create and react to competitive 120 | thrusts guickly enough. The vital ability boso nosa for dynamic change is lost. pri — can be used together in new applica- tions-development life cycles. If these technigues are widely adopted, IS can move into a new era of fast develop- 40 zberi ml ma " k pe zn šl dj sor ni s The Need for Speed The pace of business is increasing. To stay competitive, corporations are short: ening their manufacturing life cycles. They are under pressure to design new soods guickly and shorten the time re- guired to fill orders. Factories are striv- ing to reduce their inventories with | lai ; "just in time" inventory control. In Mo ei many situations, the time available to Ho — | make decisions is decreasing. To a large extent, this increase in the business metabolism is caused by the use of networks, immediate access to data and powerful decision-support tools on the desktop. sna Corporations are looking increasingly for ways to beat their competitors to market with new goods or services. American Airlines, for example, in- creased its market share by building Sa: bre, a complex system to put on-line ter- minals in travel agents' offices. TWA re- cently rebuilt its freguent-flyer program using a high-end computer-aided soft: maši o gol ej sl — prod 4 EJ MM. v "at a Hb pe iji Ve ge a A a, Č-E k z "A Ee . io' A ta je? oe ud a LN ke | er ware engineering (CASE) tool and can pi h k now respond much faster to moves by | j Leno competitors. PN REISA United Stationers grew much faster To a large extent, this than its competitors by guaranteeing 24- hour delivery of orders placed with ter- minals. Canon devised computerized technigues for designing innovative lenses and cameras faster than compet: | NET EH — ing companies. | | | | | | | MM | | in the 1990s, business will become a aja Ed EJ battle of high technology, often of com- ment that omav plaki ime in — peting computer systems. In such a the way corporations operate. world, the corporation that can create - he necessary computer applications to a development life cycle designed to fastest, can win. If a company takes give much faster development and Bi: three years to build and debug a com- er-guality results than the tradi a KT, plex application while its competitors life cycle. It is designed to exp 4 pa does it in six months, the company lose the business. z iole in a society with a worldwide mesh of intercorporate computer networks, elec-. tronic decision making, electronic funds erful developnne software. zal ba na tiy evolved. Man Sa "The RAD life cycle ug on seni int improvements in four areas: a generators, integrated transfer, computer-to-computer order CASE tools, prototyping tools and The method adds Stra buči an placement and robot factories capable fourth-generation languages; applies a weight to each element to pro- of building customized products over- e Methodology—life cyeles optimiged for. cuce a measure of:the complerity ge night, it seems outdated to spend years high-speed development; each module, independent of computer Carny/i handcerafting applications. — € Personnel—selection of highly trained language OT environment. Using this : ši da iso STRDI P ul std ZOE TRENER ENE ane 0, A VAJEN | — PG WEEKNAPPLIGATION DEVELOPMENT APPLJED INTELLIGENCE How the Methodology of Rapid Application Development (RAD) Pays Off iji | upor Iz i a P pe adi o h Ba eV pa age J l Br č za, ij da | 1 ika ——.. k s jah det : ih sa g KT ek da ž sli m odi ere poi | Rapid applications development Polena | - cles with productivity aids. in the form of a complexity metric - measured by counting the number of in- -6 Management—use of -a program module. RAD Designed To Facilitate Dynamic Cha method, a function point correspo nds o! nnel; and oi ueno ket innovative man: agement technigues to break down bu- reaucratic and political obstacles to igh-speed development. RAD encompasses a set of technigues that can be used to build complex, stra: tegic and mission-critical applications in months rather than years. The RAD life cycle is highly flexible and can be adapted to the nature of the system and the tools being used. Today there is an astonishing ditffer- ence between the best applications de- velopment and that in the majority of IS departments. As shown in the figure, the productiv- $300 aa a ia, e va di h LJ " na, di za ha h na ka i R k ; " " i H m 4 | Beni, s M | bali 4 sil m EI i si. k i | | pobi RECT Ein JI, rana m -aboL din | ru z | i adi ' na. h KI ' CO . ] di ra j mi zij J i k m ] 4, či lie ča : - : ME smi k ; a i pe o EM" | i 3 ip 1 m ij ' najia UH k Ena ki Bi s; i hi ! ' | C a u a MM k k ! s s 5n.Z m Ks j Mi a a HE K ' A, i Mm li " LI s y J ki | H " s k 4 . J M - i " Klej, Amorig Alterrative Developtnent Techititjues 4 iSi on Avakan wi - in the business metabolism is caused by the use of' networks, immediate access to data and power jul decision-support. tools on the desktop. | 3 x h pie. k [DECEMBER 18, 1989 nge in FiIrmS roughly to 114 lines of COBOL code. . The productivity figures in gram surmmarize measurements ol the number of function points that were produced per person-month in a range of actual applications using widely vary ing development technigues. The cost figures reflect the cost in dollars for each completed function polnit. The high productivity figures summa- rized in the figure are based on real or- ganizations that build systems guickly and can do so repeatedly. As in scientif- ic experiments, the success must be re- peatable in order to be interesting. The examples cited use tools and tech: nigues that are transferable to all IS or- ganizations, given appropriate manage: ment. Lower Cost Technigues for fast applications devel- opment almost always result in lower: cost development. A key to fast development is using small teams rather than large ones. Small teams can be made highly produc- tive if they use methodologies for rapid — analysis and power tools that generate code. A reduction in development time .. is thus combined with a reduction in the number of people needed. Integrated CASE tools that can gener- ate code for complete applications from design specifications are appropriate power tools for applications develop- ment; in a RAD environment. The CASE tools on the market vary greatly in capability: With some, little improvement in productivity occurs. It is critical to select integrated tools that. generate program code for complete ap- plications. The best tools are guite ex- pensive, but not compared with the cost, of large teams of IS professionals using the old technigues. Fast development does not mean "guick and dirty." It is necessary to build applications of high guality—in- deed, much higher guality is needed than in many of the applications built with traditional methodologies. Some IS organizations using CASE tools have not, improved produttivity, lowered costs or shortened development times. Only a small proportion of CASE users have learned how to achieve dra- matic improvements in these areas. Some IS executives achieve these im- ". provements on virtually every project, and it is these users who are gaining a major strategic advantage for their orga- nizations. ity of small teamš using RAD technigues is more than 10 times greater than the productivity of those using well-man- aged third-generation language life cy- The productivity figures are measured called function points. Complexity is puts, outputs, storages of system data, inguiries, files and external interfaces in Next. week, I'll discuss the actions that m must be taken to retool the IS organiza- tion in order to gain a competitive ad- vantage. H The ce introduced by James Martin at a live satellite conference on Dec. 12. For more information, call (800) 242- 1240. For information on seminars, please contact (in the United States and Canada) Technology Transfer In- stitute, 741 10th St., Santa Monica, Calif. 90402 (213) 394-8305. In Eu- s embod O ted in RAD were rope, contact Savant, 2 New St, h, Lancs., LA5 9BX United Kingdom (0524) 734 505. the dia-