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CHAPTER 6

Agile Modeling

and Prototyping

Learning Objectives

Once you have mastered the material in this chapter you will be able to:
1. Understand the roots of agile modeling in prototyping and the four main types of prototyping.
2. Use prototyping for human information requirements gathering.

3. Understand agile modeling and the core practices that differentiate it from other develop-
ment methodologies.
4. Learn the importance of values critical to agile modeling.
5. Understand how to improve efficiency for users who are knowledge workers using either
structured methods or agile modeling.

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This chapter explores agile modeling, which is a collection of innova-
tive, user-centered approaches to systems development. You will learn
the values and principles, activities, resources, practices, processes, and
tools associated with agile methodologies. Agile approaches have their
roots in prototyping, so this chapter begins with prototyping to pro-
vide a proper context for understanding, and then it takes up the agile
approach in the last half of the chapter.
Prototyping of information systems is a worthwhile technique for quickly gathering spe-
cific information about users’ information requirements. Generally speaking, effective proto-
typing should come early in the SDLC, during the requirements determination phase.
Prototyping is included at this point in the text to underscore its importance as an
information-gathering technique. When using prototyping in this way, a systems analyst
is seeking initial reactions from users and management to the prototype, user suggestions
about changing or cleaning up the prototyped system, possible innovations for it, and revi-
sion plans detailing which parts of the system need to be done first or which branches of an
organization to prototype next.

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