August 21, 2000

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Methodologies
Methodologies Vary According To The Project

By Charles Trepper

ifferent methodologies address traditional systems development, object-oriented development, and Web development. A methodology in general is a set of steps designed to guide the development process from the beginning of a project to production turnover and maintenance.

Traditional methodologies generally focus on breaking down the development process into phases or steps. For example, a generic methodology or systems-development life cycle might have five or six phases, including planning, gathering requirements and analysis, design, coding, testing, implementation, review, and maintenance. Most methodologies, regardless of project type or focus, contain some version of these steps.

Projects such as E-commerce implementation, object-oriented development, enterprise resource planning, and embedded systems development all require twists on standard methodologies, or one tailored to the needs of a specific project. For example, Andersen Consulting's methodology, Method/1, is a large methodology primarily geared toward large-scale, traditional systems-development projects. However, Method/1 also has a subset of processes that handle packaged software projects such as ERP implementations.

For object development, Rational Software Corp.'s Unified Process is based on the object-oriented Unified Modeling Language. The industry-standard UML is designed to clearly communicate requirements, architectures, and designs. UML is maintained by the Object Management Group standards organization.

Vendors are constantly updating their methodologies to reflect the newest trends in systems development. Methodologies are designed to provide guidance and structure for IT organizations, so methodologies must stay up to date to allow IT groups to incorporate new technologies into their systems-development life cycles. The trend today is, of course, toward E-commerce.

Companies are under more pressure than ever to develop systems quickly to meet customer demand and stay ahead of their competitors. Methodologies must provide rapid application development capabilities because E-commerce development cycles are shorter than ever. It's critical that methodologies be flexible enough to meet the demands of E-commerce projects and prevent developers from feeling constrained or slowed down by the structure added to the development cycle.

Curiously, none of the major methodology vendors has a methodology specifically targeting E-commerce. Computer Associates is touting its Express Delivery project methodology solution as extensible to ERP rollouts and deployment of E-commerce systems--though it seems to be primarily aimed at the technology side and lacks some components that are important to business-requirements gathering and project planning.

E-commerce probably doesn't require a methodology specifically designed for it, because most E-commerce projects are either typical packaged software implementations or custom development using Internet or Web technology. However, because of the E-craze, any vendor that can claim to have a methodology that helps companies do E-commerce better, faster, and cheaper will probably gain a huge following pretty quickly.

Another major trend is toward component and object-based development. Some methodologies are beginning to incorporate the conveniences and techniques of object development and reuse. While methodologies are typically approach independent, object-oriented methodologies generally incorporate specific modeling techniques that traditional methodologies lack.

Some prototyping methodologies, such as the DSDM Consortium's dynamic systems-development method approach, provide for iterative development. In addition, Hewlett-Packard's Team Fusion is organized around object technology and the ability to reuse objects for speed, flexibility, and consistency. Catalysis from CA's Platinum Technology unit also provides specific object capabilities and the ability to leverage components during development.

Return to main story,"Continuous Process Improvement."

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