Prototyping In Project Management

Published Date: 02 Nov 2017

Introduction

Prototyping existed many years ago as part of the methodologies in developing a project and still using this technique in today’s generation. It has been an effective way and good practice for the project management when they are developing or proposing a project. Developing a prototype before the final product can reduce the development cost and rework of the product. There are different techniques and types of prototyping that can be use in different kind of project development.

There are different descriptions of prototyping. The most common description of prototyping is – it is a method on how the development or management team managed and developed a conceptual representation of the final product. A collaboration of the ideas gathered from group meetings or brainstorming about the product and come up with an incomplete or more like ‘conceptual model’ of the final product. The prototype serves as a demonstration idea of what the final product will be. Using the prototype, the management or development team can gather information or feedbacks from the users or clients if there are any changes they may want to implement before proceeds on developing the final product.

In this report, I will discuss about the different methods, types and some tools that can be useful in developing a prototype of the project proposal. I will also discuss some viewpoints written by different people of how effective the prototyping methodology is in project development and management.

Prototype Development

Developing a prototype can help the development team clarify whether the product can be use and learn easily and to gain more suggestions regarding the product proposal. The goals of prototype development are to gather surveys or feedbacks from the user of the product and conduct revision before making the complete product and to finalize the objectives of the project proposal or the final product.

The following methodologies can be used in developing a prototype:

Plan

Verify the requirements for the project proposal. It considers business or marketing requirements, functional requirements, technical requirements and usability requirements. When formulating business requirements, it generally obtained from market field research such as regulatory or policy requirements, branding considerations and marketability and saleability potential of the project. From there, the group will discuss about the functionalities of the project and defines and considers the needed technology to support the functionalities such as software architecture, platform, what development tool and the optimal performance of the project. And the most important thing to consider is the usability requirements of the project if it is easy to use, easy to learn and can satisfy the needs of the clients or end-users.

Define the users of the product by conducting user research such as site visits. Get information from field engineers and sales force and participate in user group forums.

Prepare

Choose the type of prototyping to use in preparing the prototype of the product. There are different types of prototyping that has been used and still evolving in today’s generation. Choosing which type depends on what the project is. If you are developing a web application or website, wireframe prototyping is the common way of developing a product model. Also, there is storyboard prototyping, paper prototyping, coded prototyping and etc.

Choosing a prototyping tool depends on which type of prototyping you are creating. For wireframe, storyboard and paper prototyping, development teams can use Microsoft Office tools such as Word, Excel, Powerpoint. Visio, Acrobat and Photoshop are also can be used in developing these kinds of prototypes.

Design

Select the design criteria such as the visual and interface design and starts creating and building the prototype

Results

After building the prototype, define and communicate the results to stakeholders and make some validations and evaluations from experts and users.

Prototype Evaluation

The critical part of the prototyping process is the Evaluation of Prototype. There are two parts of this process – User Evaluation and Expert Evaluation.

User Evaluation

One of the most effective methods of User Evaluation is the Protocol Analysis. This method assesses the usability of an information system and for targeting aspects of the system, which should be changed to improve usability. The central part of protocol analysis is the complete recording (in written, audio, and/or video form) of the interaction of a user with a system, while that user "thinks out loud" in order to allow the recording of his or her perceptions, reasoning, and reactions to the system. The analysis is then provided by the researcher, who examines a number of these cases and reaches conclusions about aspects of the system that cause problems for users. The technique of protocol analysis includes the identification of the subjects, identification of the task, instructions to Users, execution of protocol analysis, post task interview and analysis.

Cognitive Walkthrough

Expert Evaluation

Before the prototypes are released for user’s evaluation, the management team conducts expert evaluation. Before the users identify some basic product issues, the expert can identify it first and can fix it which is the main objective of the expert evaluation process. Expert reviews are very useful in the early stages of prototype development and can help significantly reduce the prototype iterations required before the users sign-off on the product.

Prototyping in Project Management: Points of View

Based on the survey gathered by KnoGimmicks Social Media & Web Design on January 11, 2013:

According to Chris, most of the IT software developments use "evolutionary prototyping" and agreed that it increases the success rate of projects.

Jennifer Bridges, PMP (formerly, Jennifer Whitt) firmly believe in a prototype. She knows a company where prototyping is such an inherent part of how they do business; they set up a department that just focused on prototypes. This allowed the mainstream projects to continue without interruption while this group worked out some of the kinks, proofs of concept, etc. to show potential clients. It worked great and affectionately came to be known as the "dancing bear" department because that is what they ultimately churned out to impress the clients.

Jason Luttrell said that iterative elaboration is a better way to describe the evolutionary prototypes and is a good practice for software development. It allows you to get something to the client quickly and confirm that the requirements are correct. For Web development, that would mean wireframes, design comps, functioning/clickable proof-of-concept, then a beta release, alpha release, and final product. This lowers the amount of defects that make it to production. Prototypes are just one aspect of that process.

Conclusion

Overall, I see a great opportunity to increase the success rate in project management if there was a way to establish prototype guidelines strictly for project management itself (with it’s own respectable title of course). Not just something that should be considered as common sense or included in a different method of performing project management. There should be a basic and essential guideline produced by experienced practitioners that at least creates the option of utilizing prototype methods in a project.