Rapid system development (Rsd) methodologies: Proposing a selection framework

The current global customer trend requires companies across domains to reduce their product development lifecycle. As a result the exploration of methodologies that will support rapid system development has been gaining importance. The primary focus of this article is to provide a framework for comparative analysis of rapid system development methodologies. The purpose of this framework is to help the project managers and systems engineers choose and tailor an appropriate rapid development methodology to suit their development context and environment. Toward this, the framework identifies and defines a set of critical rapid development attributes. The article redefines rapid system development as adopting methodologies, tools, and techniques that can introduce rapidity into the system development processes while optimizing the success factors of development. The success factors are specific to the system under development and they depend on the system, product line, organization, and customers. Some of the common success factors are return-on-investment (ROI), cost of ownership, other performance factors, and customer satisfaction. The article provides a fundamental discussion on the current rapid system development methodologies, metrics, tools, and techniques.