Software Design: Prototyping

Prototyping

Incremental approach is likely to involve some interleaving of design stages with implementation. However, the design stages are likely to be 'detailed design‘ activities, occurring with a context established by a set of overall architectural design decisions that are made before the incremental phases begin.

Evolutionary. This is the form closest to our idea of ‗incremental development‘ of a system. The software for a system is adapted gradually, by changing the requirements step by step as these become clearer with use, and changing the system to fit them. In this form, prototyping is used to develop a product and the prototype gradually evolves into the end product.

Experimental. This role is distinguished by the use of the prototype for evaluating a possible solution to a problem, by developing it in advance of large-scale implementation. The reasons for doing this may be manifold, including the assessment of performance and resource needs, evaluation of the effectiveness of a particular form of user interface, assessment of an algorithm and so on. This form of prototype is essentially intended to be a ‗throw-away‘ item, and might well be implemented in a quite different form to that which will be used for the final system itself.