What is the Waterfall Model?

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What is the waterfall model?

A waterfall model is a model that organisations use to help them complete their projects in a more organised and structured way, like a guide. The waterfall model has five stages the organisation has to follow in an order, they are: requirements, design, implementation, verification and maintenance. The first stage (requirements) is when the organisation has to know what the requirements will be when creating the system, what do they need and when do they need it. During the design phase the organisation would need to first draw out some sketches of how the system would look like, the interface and the DFD (data flow diagram). They would need choose the final design so they could move on to the next stage, implementation. This is when you create the system, you use the design you created previously to help you as a guide to complete this stage. The next stage is verification, this is when you verify if the system you created is suitable for the organisation, is it reliable, is it easy to use, those sorts of things. You can verify the system by creating a survey to see what if the system is good enough. The last stage is maintenance, this is happens after you published the system, you need to maintain it by making updates and fixing errors.

Why do people use a waterfall model?

Many organisations use a waterfall because it will be easier for them to then create their own system, the waterfall model is like a guide for them, and it shows them the stages they have to go through in order to create a good system. It will save the organisation a lot of time because they don’t need to research on what they’re supposed to do next and how to do it, maybe they will skip a stage and don’t even know...

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...advantage of v-model is that it is simple and easy to use and it works very well with small projects. The disadvantage is that it is not that flexible meaning you cannot modify it any further.

DFD (Data Flow Diagram)

The system analyst will use a data flow diagram to design the system. The DFD shows how the system works and what processes it has, so for example a GP would have the patient as an entity and the process would be application form. The advantages of DFD is that it makes it easier to understand the system by displaying a graphical view of it. You can see the boundaries of the system, what the communication and the links are of the system. The disadvantages of DFD is that because there are different type of symbols that represents something, it might be kind of hard to understand what it’s about if you don’t know what the symbol means.

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