System Development Methods -- A Comparative Investigation

This article presents a retrospective comparative study of the use of the system development life cycle (SDLC) and prototyping methods to help select a development approach for a given information systems (IS) project. The respondents were asked (a) to decide independently whether one of their recent IS projects was developed using either the SDLC or prototyping approach and if so, (b) to evaluate the merit of that approach in terms of ease of project management, project requirements, project characteristics, impact on decision making, and user and designer satisfaction. The results indicate: 1. Design methods cannot be considered apart from project, environment and decision characteristics. 2. A clear cut preference of one method over the other could not be established. Each method performed better in some areas than in others. 3. A framework that can be used by a project director for selecting a design method to develop a system could be postulated.