Make your Prototypes look bad

Prototyping your software is a great way to prove to yourself, and others, that you can get something to work. One of the first goals when developing software is to make it work. And herein lies the problem. As soon as you demonstrate your software to the user, or your manager, or any other interested party, they will assume that it is ready to use. It doesn’t matter to them, that it’s a ‘Prototype’, what they can see is a working product and they will want to use it straight away (providing it does what it was intended to do). What if you deliberately made it look bad? What if you deliberately made it error? They certainly wouldn’t be so keen to roll out the red carpet and put the champagne on ice. Perhaps, introducing faults into your prototype is slightly OTT, but it is important NOT to give the impression that the product is near completion and thus create false delivery expectations that you may be unable to meet.

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