Incremental Development

The incremental software development model is often seen as the “modern” replacement of the waterfall method mentioned above. However, contrary to common belief, the practice of using this method in software development dates to as far back as the mid–1950s

As the development effort is being performed by a single person with little experience in gathering user requirements or implementing these requirements, a development methodology that offers flexibility during the project would be ideal. Due to the method used for collection of user requirements, and further suggestions made by the focus group, it is certain that a level of contradication and error will arise. This aspect of uncertainty suggests that an iterative development approach be used.

As well as offering a method to iron out uncertainty in the user requirements, using an iterative development methodology also helps to find the weak points in existing designs. By identifying weak points early in the development process, the iterative methodology allows for correction of these points so they do not cause further problems later in development. Further support for an iterative development process arise when considered for use during development of Web based systems.

Using an iterative development model would allow difficult time to be ironed out and a more sensible design to be constructed, hopefully making the final development process much quicker as the time allocated for development is very short.

An iterative, or incremental, development methodology involves development of the system in a series of partial products throughout the project timescale. This involves development of an initial implementation of the system based on the initial user requirements. The next step is to then gather feedback from the user on how they feel the system should change. With this feedback, the system is incrementally improved in order to make the software look and function more similar to the user’s requirements and needs.

Usually when the Iterative development methodology is used there are many ‘slices’ of repetition, around two or three weeks in length, where feedback is gathered and the software improved accordingly. Unfortunately, due to the limited time that I have to develop my software, I can only have two periods of feedback and improvement.