Rapid Application Development, good, bad or ugly?
- by chrisw
I have been working for such a shop for the past three years and I know deep down it cannot be like this everywhere. When I think of Rapid Application Development I immediately think programming without fore-thought. For example, when my company decides to come out with a new product, they don't do any type of relationship mapping, no ER diagrams, no round table discussions on expandability. No, the senior developer that ends up working on the product puts together a screen shot walk-through of the application to show to the client. Once the client signs off on the project work is underway by the senior developer. Now you have a senior developer (I use that term "senior" loosely) coding the application in under a week with no unit testing. Well I guess the good to this is it keeps programmers employed due to the enormous amount of unforeseen "features" in the newly created application. Have any of you dealt with a company like this? If you did how did you preserve your sanity?
