ITERATIVE METHODOLOGY

The major phases of this methodology are:

• Requirements gathering
• Analysis & Prototyping
• Build Cycle (number of iterations)
• System Testing / Integration testing
• Acceptance Testing / Implementation

Some salient features about the iterative approach:

• Iteration-0 covers aspects on Project Planning, Feasibility Study etc.
• First iteration covers aspects on Scope & Content, Addressing high- risk areas etc.
• Subsequent iterations go deeper into requirements, address risk areas, requirement changes etc.
• The tail-end iterations concentrate on improving system performance & quality, integration with little feature additions.
• Iteration can be from 2-3 weeks duration to 3-4 weeks, depending on the complexity of the system, time deadlines in place etc.

• As per the iteration plan, upon successful development of Iteration, the application will be deployed in the staging environment by SCMC.
• SCMC continues to build the next iteration.
• A demo on the staged iteration will be given to the client team.
• Client would be requested to test the staged iteration and provide feedback
• SCMC would retrofit changes/feedback on this iteration onto the next iteration.

Requirements Gathering

During this phase SCMC consultants would collect the requirements for the proposed system and prepare the requirement specification document at the end of the study. This will be achieved either in the form of training provided by the customer teams or interactive meetings with customer.

Analysis & Prototyping
This phase is strongly recommended as part of the web application development methodology. This may also be termed as Iteration-0, wherein the following would be addressed.

• Validation of system / application architecture.
• Developing a screen prototype (freeze on web design, usability through static web pages, interface design)
• Addressing Performance, Security, and Privacy required to the application

Build Cycle

The build phase will comprise design and development stages. This will go through a number of iterations. Iterations will be staged for early testing and feedback to improve the effectiveness of the application as a whole.

Design Phase

After obtaining the feedback on the prototype, the application architecture will be refined to meet the application system requirements. SCMC will follow the UML (Unified Modeling Language) methodology (using tools like Rational Rose etc.) for doing the design. In addition, the low-level design specifications will be developed. As part of the design, the following tasks will be completed:

• Application design, Data design, Integration design, Security design etc.
• Unit and system test plans will be developed for the application system.

Development Phase

In this phase the web application system will be developed in a given environment. As part of this phase, the following will be completed:

• Coding
• Unit testing

System / Integration Testing

In this phase (may be the last iteration), the entire web application system will be integrated and tested in a given environment that is pretty close to the deployment environment. The following types of testing would be performed:

• Functional testing
• Compatibility testing
• Load testing
• Volume / Stress testing

Acceptance Testing / Implementation

SCMC will be responsible to demonstrate the fully built application to the client and deploy the application in the User Testing environment. The SCMC will provide any support that may be required during acceptance testing.