Prototyping and Software Development Approaches

Researchers have provided a number of different definitions, process models and classificatory schemes for both prototypes and prototyping approaches over the past two decades. Because there tends to be some confusion in the use of prototyping terms, in this review we attempt to place prototyping in context and delineate evolutionary prototyping approaches from other kinds development approaches that may have prototypes and prototyping strategies embedded within them. We consider what prototypes are, what the prototyping process is, and how software development approaches adopt prototyping for exploration, experiment or evolution. We provide a classification of the software development approaches that include prototyping of some kind. Within this discussion we review experimental prototyping, exploratory prototyping and evolutionary development.