During the last few decades a number of software development
models have been proposed and discussed within the Software
Engineering community. Examples of such models are Waterfall,
Spiral, V Model, and Prototyping. The introduction of different
models and their subsequent adoption by practitioners motivates
the need to compare them. Comparisons are defined to i) find the
best fit for a particular software development project; ii) improve
the models themselves; iii) facilitate dissemination and education
on development best practices and iv) find relevant information to
define new models. However, existing comparisons are often
largely based on the experience of practitioners and the intuitive
understandings of the authors. Consequently, they tend to be
subjective and inaccurate. The lack of a systematic way of
comparing development models reduces understanding of such
models and their overall acceptance by practitioners. We propose
a systematic way of comparing software development models
based on a formal technique originally proposed to compare
design methodologies. The use of one well-defined formal
technique provides a more consistent and efficient way to compare
software development models and could be used to fine-tune the
software development process of a software development
organization. We present the results of a case study conducted to
compare two well known and largely used development models.
Results of such comparisons could be used by Information
Technology educators to show their students the advantages and
disadvantages of each model and instruct them on how and when
to apply each model or variations of them.