System Development - JAD - Joint Application
Development!
Joint Application Development
(JAD) or otherwise known as Joint Application Design was designed
by Chuck Morris and Tony Crawford, with IBM, in the late 1970's.
They later teached this methodology through workshops in the
1980's.
Joint Application Development
was created to be used for designing computer based systems,
however this methodology can be applied to many different
development processes.
Joint Application Development
or JAD involves continuous interaction with the users of the
system that is being developed along with the different designers
of the system. JAD is basically a technique that allows the
developers, designers, managers, and users to work together
to build a product.
It is thought that JAD
creates a faster development process as well as minimizing
errors along the way with the system.
JAD is also thought to be the best methodology
for collecting requirements from a businesses users or customers.
The basic idea behind Joint Application Development is that
the requirements of the users and any issues are brought up
and resolved as early as possible with the process of a series
of meetings.
With every Systems Development Lifecycle
(SDLC), it can be very difficult to collect requirements for
a project. Having the users help in the process is definately
a benefit of the Joint Application Development process. If
a business develops applications and does not gather user
requirements, it may be prone to failure as user input is
an invaluable resource to any Information Technology project.
There are many benefits of using the Joint
Application Development process:
- Can save time or monetary resources as problems are found
up-front and delt with along the way;
- Can reduce scope creep;
- Can help reduce developer guessing, where a developer
isn't sure what the end result should be, with the users
being involved, these questions can be answered along the
way in development.
There are different team leaders that are generally involved
with the Joint Application Development process. Some of these
team members would be:
Project Leader, Project Faciliator, Management Sponsor, Information
Technology Specialists, and Users or Customers.
