RAD and prototyping - a brief definition

RAD stands for Rapid Application Development and is an 80's concept by Barry Boehm in software development which consists in working on a prototype. Its conception meant a drastic contrast to the waterfall model, which was sequential and linear, while prototyping allowed for incremented changes as new requirements crop up until the final product is released. RAD is especially well suited for developing software that is driven by user interface requirements. Graphical user interface builders are often called rapid application development tools and are remarkable for allowing developers to add visual features such as labels, text boxes, combo boxes etc in front of the customer and perform trivial tests with fictitious data as a means to capture user requirements and to form an idea of how the finished system should look like. Thus, the RAD model is based on prototyping and iterative development with no specific planning involved by focusing on gathering customer requirements through workshops or focus groups, early testing of the prototypes by the customer using iterative concept, reuse of the existing prototypes (components), continuous integration and rapid delivery.