Evolutionary design, continuous design, evolutive design, or incremental design is directly related to any modular design application, in which components can be freely substituted to improve the design, modify performance, or change another feature at a later time.
Informatics
In particular, it applies (with the name continuous design) to
software development. In this field it is a practice of creating and modifying the design of a system as it is developed, rather than purporting to specify the system completely before development starts (as in the
waterfall model
The waterfall model is a breakdown of project activities into linear sequential phases, meaning they are passed down onto each other, where each phase depends on the deliverables of the previous one and corresponds to a specialization of tasks. ...
). Continuous design was popularized by
extreme programming
Extreme programming (XP) is a software development methodology intended to improve software quality and responsiveness to changing customer requirements. As a type of agile software development,"Human Centred Technology Workshop 2006 ", 2006, P ...
. Continuous design also uses
test driven development
Test-driven development (TDD) is a software development process relying on software requirements being converted to test cases before software is fully developed, and tracking all software development by repeatedly testing the software against al ...
and
refactoring
In computer programming and software design, code refactoring is the process of restructuring existing computer code—changing the '' factoring''—without changing its external behavior. Refactoring is intended to improve the design, structu ...
.
Martin Fowler wrote a popular book called ''Refactoring'', as well as a popular article entitled "Is Design Dead?", that talked about continuous/evolutionary design.
James Shore
James is a common English language surname and given name:
*James (name), the typically masculine first name James
* James (surname), various people with the last name James
James or James City may also refer to:
People
* King James (disambiguat ...
wrote an article in IEEE titled "Continuous Design".
Industrial design
Modular design states that a product is made of subsystems that are joined together to create a full product. The above design model defined in electronics and evolved in industrial design into well consolidated industrial standards related to platform concept and its evolution.
[Muffatto M (1999) Platform strategies in international new product development. Int J Opera Prod Manag 19(5/6):449–460. doi:10.1108/01443579910260766]
See also
*
Rapid application development
Rapid application development (RAD), also called rapid application building (RAB), is both a general term for adaptive software development approaches, and the name for James Martin's method of rapid development. In general, RAD approaches to ...
*
Continuous integration
*
Evolutionary database design Evolutionary database design involves incremental improvements to the database schema so that it can be continuously updated with changes, reflecting the customer's requirements. People across the globe work on the same piece of software at the sam ...
References
External links
Is Design Dead?
Software design
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