PowerBuilder® 9: Internet and Distributed Application Development

Using the Design to Set the Scope

The design also provides you with a tool to define the scope of the development effort. After the use cases, business process models, and conceptual data models have been defined, it's always a good idea to do two things: Look at the design elements in place and determine what chunks of the development effort can and should be undertaken at each stage. Systems that are broken up into manageable chunks get developed faster and more accurately, and they are more robust than systems for which one huge development effort takes place. When the scope is outlined, you can do this in the model itself either by using color or by surrounding the items needed in a box outline.

In phased approaches, usually when the first ...