Following are the steps to develop a struts1 bases programs

1. Gather and define the application requirement.
2. Define and developed each screen requirement in terms of the data collected and displayed.
3. Determine all the access path for each screen.
4. Determine the ActionMapping that correlate to the application business logic.
5. Create the ActionForms with depend properties from the screen requirements this(include the validation portion as well.
6. Develop Actions to be called by ActionMappings that in turn call the appropriate helpers and forward to jsp.
7. Develop the application business logic (Beans,ejb,etc)
8. Create jsp to match the workflows using ActionMappings.
9. Build the appropriate configuration file this includes struts-config.xml and web.xml.
10. Build,test,deploy.