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The Four Stages of the RAD Life Cycle

According to British IT consultant and author James Martin, who wrote the book Rapid Application Development in 1991, there are four stages to the RAD life cycle:

  • Plan›

    Business and IT stakeholders collaborate to quickly scope out a project—focusing on key objectives but allowing for flexibility during the prototyping sub-section of the User Design stage.

  • User-Informed Design›

    Split into a cycle of prototyping, testing, and refining, RAD emphasizes user design by getting a working model in front of the eyes of users early and often. Not only does this inform design decisions and product feature development, but it helps gutcheck the viability of your big idea.

  • Construct›

    The modern RAD construct phase is optimized by low-code platforms that facilitate business and IT communication. During the construct phase, low-code platforms with model-driven development (MDD) features empower both developers and business users. The best developers can tackle the thorniest problems because easy-to-understand visual models allow citizen developers to seamlessly contribute new ideas to the product’s designs and features.

  • Cutover›

    By compressing parallel stages from the traditional Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC), the cutover phase includes implementation, testing, integration, and maintenance.

What Are The Advantages of RAD?

According to Mendix research, 71% of IT teams are unable to keep pace with growing the needs of their organization, while 96% say that business is affected when a solution isn’t delivered in a timely way. More projects, less time to complete them—sound familiar? Here are some ways rapid development can help:

RAD Reduces Risk

RAD requires short, agile sprints that repeat as frequently as the project requires. This iterative approach uncovers bugs and logic issues earlier in the SDLC before they can derail delivery.

RAD Increases Quality

Incorporating valuable feedback from business stakeholders and end-users is central to the Rapid Application Development process. User feedback helps refine and target your big idea so that it meets the needs of your business and satisfies your customers.

RAD Is Faster

Applying iterative releases and code reusability on a model-driven, low-code platform allows your team to focus less on overwrought processes and documentation. The result? You deliver your solution on time, solving the business need, instead of missing it.

Proven Customer Success

“

It was a no-brainer for us. It made financial sense to abandon tens of millions of dollars of investment and adopt a low-code approach to development.”

Bashir Bseirani,
CEO, Avertra

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“

Low-code platforms like Mendix make building applications so much faster and so much easier. I truly believe that in the future, low-code platforms will be ubiquitous.”

Eline Bijkerk,
Mendix Business Engineer, BAM Infra

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“

From idea to workable product that you can demonstrate to a customer in a fortnight, is unheard of. And we can do that.”

Barrington Clarke,
DevOps Lead, Zurich Insurance

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Use Low-Code to Get The Most Out of Rapid Application Development

Mendix is the only RAD-friendly low-code platform that offers users a collaborative, visual way to build applications—while including default cloud-native architecture, security and governance controls, and performance monitoring. With Mendix, users can smoothly manage their operational priorities from the same platform, even after development concludes.

Built-In Collaboration and Communication
Collaborate on data models, complex logic development, and even business processes and workflows. From an immersive AR experience to a fully native mobile application, Mendix optimizes IT-Business collaboration.
Learn more about Collaborative Visual Development
Low-Code for the Pros
Professional developers can use Mendix Studio Pro’s low-code integrated development environment (IDE) to build and extend applications. Studio Pro is open and extensible and can integrate with anything. Develop, deploy, test, and manage apps from a single integrated visual development environment with Mendix.
Learn more about Mendix for Professional Development
No Code for Citizen Development Dividends
Anyone with a good idea can quickly build productivity applications using Mendix Studio’s Visual Development interface. In addition, Mendix is loaded with hundreds of popular pre-built widgets, templates, and components—with even more available at the Mendix App Store—to accelerate your RAD-driven projects.
Learn more about low-code for citizen developers
Multi-Experience Development
Today’s users want a seamless experience across multiple touchpoints. Your team can now use a single low-code platform and skillset to build engaging experiences (apps) for devices like iOS and Android Phones and Tablets, Amazon Alexa, Google Home, Apple and Android TV, and more.
Learn more about the Multi-experience Development
Full Application Life Cycle Management
From business requirements management and app development to one-click cloud deployment to operational dashboards that monitor your live products’ health, Mendix makes it easy to project manage your big idea from start to finish.
Learn more about the Mendix Platform