Sorry for not responding earlier.  Getting my ducks in a row.

 I asked the question because I feel that agile methods better reflect the nature of the PAT task. (http://agilemanifesto.org/principles.html)  Brooks (Mythical Man Month) first noted that the design process was iterative. Gane & Sarson tried to ignore it in their 'Structured Design' (Circa 1983).  RUP which sort of takes over from SD has a modified notion of the waterfall.  The latter methodologies generate many artifacts that are not apropriate to small projects.  These reports and exercises 'fit' large productions well but take too much time in small one-man projects.  XP ( http://www.extremeprogramming.org/ ) is a methodology that has many features that 'fit' the PAT quite well.  User stories and spikes are examples.  There are other methodologies such as scrum( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scrum_(development) ), however I'm not convinced it had value for the PAT.  At the HCI level (usability is the new term) I feel Participative Design is far more appropriate than the traditional methods. 

How about some comments thus far?

Donald

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Thanks, Donald.

 We will look into all the new trends to see how we can best apply these to the PAT.

We have just had an IT workshop for subject advisors and we had an excellent presentation and demonstration regarding usability. Very, very interesting and lots of food for thought.

Hi

Ek gee IT in KLERKSDORP en sal graag meer voorbeelde of oefeninge met die antwoorde by wil hê wat ek weet nie altyd of ek reg is nie en sukkel maar nog baie veral by die OBJEK ens.  Meeste van die inligting wat ek kry is maar eng wat dit nogal moeilik maak as ek regtig niks tyd het nie.  Ek kyk wel by TeachIT maar daar is nie baie nie. 

Dankie

Ann