Friday, August 26, 2005

Prototyping Blues

See if this situation rigs a bell: a manager tells you to build a proof of concept to test the look and feel of a new application. You hack for a week straight, day and night, producing some of the ugliest code you have ever seen to make the Big Demo. After all of your hacking, the meeting is a huge success and everyone loves your prototype. Then someone asks you how long until the application is deployed. You respond with a reasonably worked estimate of six to nine months. The feeling in the room quickly changes like someone just stopped the music in a bad 80s show. No one understands why its going to take nine months to build something that they already see in front of them. No one is happy anymore. Uh-oh.

from Interaction Happens: Prototyping Techniques
by Jonathan Simon

That's a leson I learned early, where the client didn't understand why it would take three months to build a system they 'saw' after three days of prototyping. Good to know I'm not alone.

- Peace

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