Flexible systems for changing organizations: Implementing rapid application development

Rapid application development (RAD) promises to deliver high quality applications quickly. But the approach relies on close partnerships between IT staff and business users which may not be easy to achieve in the current climate of rapidly fragmenting organizations and, like all major innovations, RAD implementation must be managed carefully over an extended time period in order to become fully instutionalised. In this paper RAD implementation at two large UK organizations is described. One has failed to institutionalise RAD, the other had succeeded. The key lessons from this work are that even basic RAD tools and techniques can deliver benefits; that RAD implementors need to be given time to learn through experience of use; that a permanent methods group can help to stimulate RAD learning and act as a linking mechanism between successive information system (IS) development projects; that an RAD framework should be prescriptive and that an education programme which explains both the role of the information technology (IT) specialist and the business user should be pursued vigorously.