4. Object-Oriented Approach

In the object-oriented approach, a system is viewed as a set of objects. All object-orientation experts agree that a good methodology is essential for software development, especially when working in teams. Thus, quite a few methodologies have been invented over the last decade. Broadly speaking, all object-oriented methodologies are alike – they have similar phases and similar artifacts – but there are many small differences. Object-oriented methodologies tend not to be too prescriptive: the developers are given some choice about whether they use a particular type of diagram, for example. Therefore, the development team must select a methodology and agree which artifacts are to be produced, before they do any detailed planning or scheduling. In general, each methodology addresses:

  • The philosophy behind each of the phases. 
  • The workflows and the individual activities within each phase. 
  • The artifacts that should be produced (diagrams, textual descriptions and code). 
  • Dependencies between the artifacts. 
  • Notations for the different kinds of artifacts. 
  • The need to model static structure and dynamic behavior. 

Static modeling involves deciding what the logical or physical parts of the system should be and how they should be connected together. Dynamic modeling is about deciding how the static parts should collaborate. Roughly speaking, static modeling describes how we construct and initialize the system, while dynamic modeling describes how the system should behave when it‟s running. Typically, we produce at least one static model and one dynamic model during each phase of the development.

Some methodologies, especially the more comprehensive ones, have alternative development paths, geared to different types and sizes of development.[1,4]

The benefits of Object-Oriented Development are reduced time to market, greater product flexibility, and schedule predictability and the risks of them are performance and startup costs [5].