Spiral Model - Applications

Applications

The spiral model is mostly used in large projects. For smaller projects, the concept of agile software development is becoming a viable alternative. The military had adopted the spiral model for its Future Combat Systems program. The FCS project was canceled after six years (2003–2009), it had a two year iteration (spiral). The FCS should have resulted in three consecutive prototypes (one prototype per spiral—every two years). It was canceled in May 2009. The spiral model thus may suit small (up to $3 million) software applications and not a complicated ($3 billion) distributed, interoperable, system of systems.

Also it is reasonable to use the spiral model in projects where business goals are unstable but the architecture must be realized well enough to provide high loading and stress ability. For example, the Spiral Architecture Driven Development is the spiral based Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC) which shows one possible way how to reduce the risk of non-effective architecture with the help of a spiral model in conjunction with the best practices from other models.