What is Rapid Software Prototyping

What:

Rapid prototyping is the fast fabrication of a model that displays the core functionalities of your idea. In our case, we focus on software development. Once accomplished, a prototype has to be tested with a client to validate the project.

Creating software means creating something that people are going to enjoy using, your customers will never tell you directly what they want because most of the time, they just have a vague idea themselves.

Through iterations and improvements made to your initial prototype, you will construct your product. The fact that the process has to be rapid exists because the initial prototype will be the building ground for everyone in the company and your users. Once you have that prototype, your team will have a better, more concrete idea of where the project is going, to the client, it gives them a direct impression and the opportunity to guide you in the direction they want.

Rapid software prototyping, therefore, means quickly creating an initial prototype but the work can’t be rushed as it would jeopardize the future modifications made on the project. There has to be a balance between speed and quality. In some cases, you can even have both.

Why:

There are a few reasons why the field of rapid software prototyping is relevant in today’s world:

• Find the areas of improvement

When developing software, you should pay attention to every design and consider what your customer wants and what he envisions. There are always interactions that need to be tweaked to improve the user experience or make the features more seamless.

As you create your software, you will gain a precious insight into what you’ve developed, you’ll get a wider view of the project and a better idea of how the whole thing operates as a whole. It’s the little things that will be improved upon when creating a prototype.

• Validate assumptions

As you test your prototype with a client, you will validate the assumptions that you have done and figure out what works or doesn’t. Your customer might not like how you’ve implemented their idea, it’s the opportunity to change things around and create what they had in mind.

• Expose business value

Having a working prototype is incredibly valuable, it allows businesses to directly make comments about problems that matter to them. This will make everyone save time and make it incredibly easy to show what you are capable of to attract investors and new clients.

How:

Ensuring you can develop quickly and efficiently involves two different ideas.

1. From an idea to a functional device

When you receive a request for a new concept, always start by analyzing its validity, do you have a clear vision of what is expected of you, is there a solid problem, and are the outputs defined ? If the answer to one of those questions is no, you should strongly consider pushing back the offer and asking for more information. This will save you time and help your efficiency in the development process.

You should have a team of experienced multidisciplinary individuals who can quickly understand the concept, decompose the different elements of the project, identify similarities with other projects that can be reused.

This will be the key to rapid software development, you should learn to easily pick out relevant and potentially reusable components from the various projects you’ve worked on. This will help you save time and money.

As you develop the software, think like your user, what features does he need ? Don’t try and implement things that the customer didn’t ask for, you will waste your time on features that might be totally useless. Once again, we notice the importance of clearly understanding the user’s needs.

Pick out which aspects of the prototype are fundamental, which ones should be reused and which should be mocked. To do so, you should look for the ones that are fundamental for the specific idea, and the ones that need to be exposed to real users for feedback.

Your end goal is a realistic product, not market-ready software. Move fast and consider using static data to move faster. Once you have a working version, get feedback, iterate, build, feedback, iterate etc.

2. Setting up your different processes

These examples are practical tips on how to quicken your development.

• Use standardized data sets

Use a set of well documented and well-understood data sets, it may be artificial or real, internal or public. The goal is for you to avoid potential errors from the input data. Remember we’re trying to get a prototype out, not the final product.

• Use APIs

Don’t be afraid to use APIs, they will boost your development and shortcut difficult implementations like adding authentication, machine learning or facial recognition.

• Consider using external libraries and already existing scripts

Just like external Apis, scripts and already existing lines of code can help you implement basic functionalities or advanced data processing algorithms.

• AI and ML

Developing a custom neural network can be a daunting task, to create an initial prototype, consider using a pre-trained network. This is pretty straightforward and only requires the right collection of APIs and models. Most of them are well documented and offer guidance for integration though.

        As businesses need to try out their ideas before investing, rapid software prototyping is increasingly important to companies. We’ve looked at different shortcuts for the development of features and more practical ways of developing a prototype.