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However, prototyping is often not a good time for hacking.īe aware of the technical debt you are creating when coding a prototype. For this reason, it's important to recognize the distinction between prototyping and "hacking." Hacking (or coding with an extreme emphasis on quick and often unstable, temporary solutions) can be great for learning, creating a short-lived proof of concept, or just having fun.
#A prototype is a code#
Though there is an emphasis on speed while developing a prototype, it's important to remember that your code could be the foundation for a future production application or feature.
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Important Considerations During Prototype Phase And if you become too emotionally invested in a prototype, it can be disheartening when things don't go as planned. Investing too much time and energy developing any aspect of a prototype could be wasteful. Since you are prototyping in a time of uncertainty, anything you are working on could be scrapped and sent back to the drawing board. You want to be able to get the answers and feedback you need without expending a lot of time and money. Keeping costs low is a significant priority during the prototyping phase. If these are not well-defined, your prototype might be waiting in limbo, unable to make progress with no clear path forward. For example: I need the VP of engineering to approve the login redesign by Wednesday afternoon.
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You need to know what your pass/fail conditions are, who will be doing the evaluating, and what the deadlines and expectations are for the evaluators. A slow moving evaluation or feedback cycle diminishes the purpose of being able to develop rapidly, and it wastes a lot of time.Įxpediting the feedback cycle can be achieved through having well-defined metrics for evaluation. It's important that decisions about the viability of a prototype or iteration are communicated in a timely manner so it can either be efficiently adopted to production or scrapped and sent back to the drawing board. Oftentimes during the prototype phase we are going back and forth between stakeholders, presenting new ideas and features, and interrogating their viability. The primary goal of rapid iteration is the ability to test and evaluate the iterations. To help with efficiency, appropriate technical designing and planning should be done before beginning to code. Rapid development usually involves a more bare-bones approach, which may include coding a lower fidelity version of the desired feature, and usually involves trimming the bells and whistles you might find in a production app, like complicated testing frameworks, expensive database management, etc. Prototypes are generally created during times of uncertainty, when we have questions like: Is this a viable product? How easy will this be to implement? Will end users like this? We want to be able to answer these questions quickly and rapidly iterate until we find the best solution or get the answers we're looking for. There are three main priorities during the prototype development phase: the ability to rapidly iterate, receive quick feedback, and keep costs relatively low. Early prototypes can be simple sketches and drawings, but in this article I'm going to focus specifically on coded prototypes. Prototypes are a great way to get stakeholders on board with a new project or changes to an existing project without making costly upfront investments. Oftentimes a prototype is created as a simplified version of the desired final product or feature that is used to test concepts before fully committing to them. Prototype development is defined by a rapid development pace for iterating and testing. And by protecting your bottom line, it can increase your chances of project success. Understanding these nuances and properly planning your prototype to transition into a product can save you a lot of time and money.
#A prototype is a software#
At these two distinct stages of software development, the priorities, pace, and coding practices can differ greatly. In a typical software life cycle, most projects begin as a bouncing baby prototype and later develop into a strong, trusted production application.