ABSTRACT
This chapter explores some of the issues of modern development methodologies based on advances in computing technologies and driven by the business need for rapid development. It considers a number of modern methodologies which focus upon rapid development, the ways in which new technologies have allowed the use of prototyping in system development, and the importance of prototyping for Geographic Information Systems (GIS) development. In information systems attributes and operations are encapsulated to create objects. Delivering a system on time and within budget is only one angle, albeit an important one, of the modern problem of rapid development. In a thorough and critical study of the introduction of GIS in the US Army topographical support service D. J. Peuquet and T. Bacastow put forward prototyping as the key to success where the traditional waterfall model had failed. Prototyping has long been recognised as an approach to systems development that has been applied to everything from aircraft to zips.
