Prototyping

Prototyping

The goal of prototyping based development is to counter the first two limitations of the waterfall model discussed earlier. The basic idea here is that instead of freezing the requirements before a design or coding can proceed, a throwaway prototype is built to understand the requirements.

Advantages:

1. Users are actively involved in the development
2. It provides a better system to users, as users have natural tendency to change their mind in specifying requirements and this method of developing systems supports this user tendency.
3. Since in this methodology a working model of the system is provided, the users get a better understanding of the system being developed.
4. Errors can be detected much earlier as the system is mode side by side.
5. Quicker user feedback is available leading to better solutions.

Disadvantages:

1. Leads to implementing and then repairing way of building systems.
2. Practically, this methodology may increase the complexity of the system as scope of the system may expand beyond original plans.