Systems Development Practices: Circa 2001

A desire to be “leading edge,” and input from particular industry partners has convinced some Information Systems university programs to transition from structured to object oriented foci; other programs are seeking empirical evidence to support their decisions regarding which modeling techniques to emphasize. Knowing which techniques are currently used (state-of-the-practice) and will likely be used in the future (state-of-the-art) should enable programs to make more informed decisions regarding paradigm transitions and which techniques to emphasize within their chosen development paradigm. This research evaluates responses from 32 project managers to empirically evaluate which methods are used to fulfill the requirements of real-world projects. Contrary to prior empirical research, this study found object oriented methods have gained par with structured methods relative to use in practical business applications. Within both paradigms, those models that focus on data architecture (Entity-Relationship and Class Diagrams) were reported to be most frequently used and most useful.