Boost up your business with open source RAD software. RAD provides a framework to lower development costs, faster delivery, fewer errors, and happier clients.

rapid application development software

Overview

If you are looking to speed up your development processes using rapid application development software and your focus is on turnover, then this blog post is for you. In the near past, we published an article Top 5 Free Rapid Application Development Software In 2021. It enlists the widely used open source rapid prototyping software. There is another blog post with the title Jhipster Tutorial To Setup And Create The First Application. This is a tutorial blog post that demonstrates a popular RAD platform named Jhipster.

In this quick-paced world, it becomes quite hard to meet ever-changing software development needs. First, software development teams need to make sure of frequent deliveries. Second, the prototype of any application gives a complete idea of the whole project, hence prototyping is another factor. Third, teams are now considering customer feedback the most important part of the development lifecycle. The developers of the time realized the drawbacks of the traditional waterfall method. However, they adopted open source MVP builder that supports unlimited iterations and revisions.

To address these and some other important aspects, the RAD methodologies have gained much popularity. However, there are many RAD software available to meet the speed of growing business and client needs.

In this blog post, we will go through the following points.

What are prototyping and rapid application development?

The rapid application development approach is focused less on strict planning and more on development. It is very close to the agile software development approach. Unlike the Waterfall model, it is flexible and supports revisions at any stage.

The rapid application development software let developers make adjustments and enhancements in any development process. There are regular sprints of development and bug fixing to deliver earlier releases.

The main concepts of RAD are reusability and prototyping. Rapid application development emphasizes modularity and components-based architecture. RAD also relies on consistent communication among the stakeholders involved in the whole process. There has been a change in RAD methodology where requirements can be modified at any stage. Therefore, there are many MVP builders that you can use to have your prototype completed in a quicker time if you are a team of experienced developers.

What is RAD methodology?

RAD methodology consists of the following phases.

Requirement Gathering

In the first phase, stakeholders sit together and finalize the initial requirements. They do not spend weeks or months rather they just collect the gist of the requirements and start development right away. However, there is always room to work on the new requirements at any stage to meet customer use cases.

Develop Prototype

After the initial requirements are in place, the next step is to build a prototype of the product using an open source MVP builder. This prototype gives an idea of the whole product. Development teams also call it MVP which is a lightweight early version of the application.

Client Feedback

Once the prototype has been developed, the next phase is to present this prototype to the client. The client observes every aspect of the application and gives his/her feedback. RAD developers then analyze this feedback to bring improvements or modifications.

Continuous Development And Testing

In this phase, RAD teams tend to perform continuous cycles of development and testing. This phase ensures that everything is in the right direction and aligned with the client’s needs. In addition, developers keep developing new features and release versions of the product with the latest features and documentation.

Benefits of RAD software?

Let’s see what are the benefits we can get by adopting rapid application software.

  • Flexibility – Open source RAD platform is flexible enough to incorporate any change at any stage.
  • Speed – RAD tools help developers to speed up the development and deployment processes to make deliveries on time.
  • Cost – Developers always stay aligned with the requirements and hence, they build exactly what they have been asked for. It gives you enhanced productivity with a lesser number of team members. So, nothing more nothing less, and eventually no extra cost.
  • Code Reuse – This is the biggest advantage, as this approach is based on modules and components. Therefore, rapid application development software enable developers enjoy the reuse of existing code for the new functionalities.
  • Utmost Client Satisfaction – Due to the highest level of communication and collaboration, customer satisfaction increases. As there is a very low possibility of detraction because of strong cooperation.
  • Instant Fix – In fact, there are production support teams working on bug fixing. However, in this model, whenever there is a mishandeling found, developers fix them in a quicker time.
  • Latest Technologies – It is a huge advantage of the RAD model that development teams can adopt and test the latest tools and technologies at any stage.

Conclusion

Here comes the end of this tutorial. There are many software development models such as the Waterfall model, Spiral model, V-Shaped model, Agile model, and some more. So, the adoption of any model depends on your use cases and the nature of the software. Therefore, this blog post will really help you if you are looking to adopt the RAD model for your business. Regardless of the platform, there are several open source rapid application development software that offer cross-platform capabilities with development tools. There are other rapid prototyping software available in the ‘Explore’ section below that follow the RAD methodologies. This is high time to adopt this cost-effective and robust approach to develop production-ready business software.

In the end, containerize.com is in the continuous process of introducing open source RAD software. Please follow this Rapid Application Development category for regular updates. Further, the software listed below in the explore section are open source, free and self-hosted. All these source code generators come with comprehensive documentation regarding development and deployment.

Explore

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