Specialist “individuals”, who miraculously produced solutions to business problems in months rather than years, developed early software systems. Companies found this to be a disadvantage as systems became more complex, maintenance increased (due to demands in markets and business culture), and the once hailed systems developers were found no longer to be with the company and that their documentation had been sparse. Hence, systems development methodologies were born, and these traditional techniques have been used for many years now. As the strategic value of software increases for many companies, the software industry is again looking for techniques to improve the production of software. The ideal techniques are those that will improve quality and reduce cost and time-to-market, however, new techniques alone will not conquer these problems. This thesis examines two relatively new development paradigms, that of the Objectoriented and Rapid Application Development approaches, which in reality attempt to solve the concerns mentioned. The thesis also examines how these differences could be integrated to provide a better solution to developing systems and how they reflect upon the ideals of the groups of people involved. From this examination, an example approach, known as OpenRoAD, is defined, described and evaluated using a “typical” project. Through industrial links, the ways in which these approaches are adopted is compared and two methods of adopting this example approach are given.

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