Study of Object Oriented Analysis and Design Approach

Problem statement: Object and component technologies, rapidly maturing branches of information technology, have been becoming pervasive elements of systems development, especially the recently popular Internet applications and thus leading to increased complexity and at the same time broader range of applications. Approach: This needs to be understood in order to maximize its benefits and applications with consistent results. However, mainstream Object Oriented Systems Development (OOSD), consisting of Object Oriented Analysis and Design (OOAD) and Object- Oriented Programming (OOP), has a history of difficulties and is still struggling to gain prevalent acceptance. Results: There have been number of studies and experiments conducted by experts and researchers in the past which provides a solid base to take up this study and look into various intricacies present. There have been several studies and focused efforts in this direction which laid down the basis for a segment of people to form the opinion as “technology adoption is mostly the result of marketing forces, not scientific evidence” whereas there have been another segment that believes that object technology is “still long on hype and short on results ...”. The gurus of OOSD continue to tout its vast superiority over conventional systems development, even to the extent of developing a unified software development process. Conclusion: The advocates of OOSD claim many advantages including easier modeling, increased code reuse, higher system quality and easier maintenance. It is well understood that analysis and design are extremely critical aspects of successful systems development especially in the case of OOSD. As the development of any successful information system must begin with a well-conceived and implemented analysis and design, this study will focus on the most recent empirical evidence on the pros and cons of OOAD.