Rapid Application Development for Small and Medium Businesses, A Case Study

Abstract

This field project is based on developing a web application model for a hypothetical small business –“Beverly Flowers.” As a small business, it did not see the need for a web presence in its initial years of operation. However its latest marketing analysis has revealed that its existing customer base wants the convenience of shopping from home. The company would like to develop a web application rapidly to gain maximum benefits; however the company lacks Information Technology resources due to budget constraints. In the current age of fast pace commerce, every Small and Medium sized Business (SMB), without e-Commerce or a Web presence is faced with similar challenges. This field project focuses on how SMBs can embark on a new initiative to build a web presence rapidly, efficiently, and cost effectively by using an industry proven open source software such as the Spring framework. The field project focuses on the benefits that small and medium companies can gain by rapidly developing web application using the open source model. There are many successful organizations that have adopted this method and have implemented successful applications. This has resulted in tremendous cost savings and increase in customer satisfaction for those companies. This field project also includes a small software development model – a prototype, to build the required web presence for Beverly Flowers using Spring framework.