[Sigia-l] rapid prototyping by business managers

[Lord, Ralph]

Matt Wrote:

> Just be sure to manage
> expectations.

Absolutely essential.

That said, our view is that anything that can help the business
understand what needs to be built is a good thing.  One of the best
things is a "conceptual prototype" or, more universally, "sketches" of
the idea for the new/improved thing.

There's nothing quite like something tangible for getting reactions and
useful feedback.  Once again, just be certain (to the point of sounding
like a broken record), that everyone is absolutely and unequivocally
clear about the "non-realness" of what they're seeing and the huge gulf
that exists between this sketch (or conceptual prototype) and the
delivery of anything remotely resembling it.

I'm not a psychologist and don't play one on TV and this discussion
(which arises frequently on many lists) has me again wondering if
there's any useful conclusions which have been drawn about this tendency
(worse among business management??engineering??customers??no-one??) to
become convinced that something that looks like a computer program must
indeed be an almost-ready-to-sell product?

Everyone I know has horror stories of clients/customers/friends who just
could not be dissuaded that the mockup/prototype they were seeing wasn't
almost ready to ship.

At the recent ForUse2003 conference, Bill Buxton spoke at length about
the need to make the prototypes look "sketchy" as a means to try and
reinforce in the viewer's minds that this thing isn't real and isn't
almost ready to ship.  On the other hand, the automakers spend thousands
(psst, Dr. Evil, it's 2003)oh, yes, MILLIONS of dollars to create models
that are indistinguishable from real cars in hopes of eliciting the
richest feedback possible from autoshow attendees with no problems about
misperception on management's part.

Maybe it's as simple that the work/complexity involved in building
working software systems just isn't well understood?



Ralph Lord
Atlanta