The Importance of Software Application Prototyping

For any business who outsources software development there is always the worry that the finished product won't accurately reflect your requirements.

Which is why when TCF Software build software we try to leave nothing to chance. We don’t assume; we ask, understand and articulate into an exact plan. The tangibility of this plan is the prototype which will ensure that you’re getting exactly what you expected and agreed to.

After 30 years of experience of the Software Industry I've found that nine times out of ten the reason many software development projects fail is due to poor planning. Without it, you run the risk of delays, errors, re-work and mounting costs.

It's great to just get stuck into writing code and seeing a project taking shape but without planning corners will be cut and assumptions will be made all increasing the risk factor.

Understandably, customers want their software up and running as soon as possible, so often focus on the core functions rather than considering rare scenarios. It’s not until the software begins to be used that these scenarios manifest themselves and the gaps are revealed. The cost of retrospectively fixing these gaps in terms of system stability, cost and time can be severe.

If we were taking part in a building project then we wouldn't expect to start construction without detailed plans, detailing measurements and positions and materials. The exact is true with Software Development and even more so if the Software is used in a risk environment like for instance in Health.

So with TCF Software we go with a multi-stage approach to try to minimise risk and lower costs.

Stage One:

At this stage, you have nothing visual to prototype. Instead, it is important to start laying out your work flows. We think about it from the user’s perspective of some common tasks they will want to accomplish in your app, and lay out the basic flows they will go through. When creating these flows, we start laying out the foundations, defining the screens needed in your app, as well as important actions needed on these screens. The prototypes to come will be based on these work flows

Stage Two:

At this point, we actually have the content segmented into screens and we construct a low fidelity click-through prototype to get a sense of how a user might navigate through your app. Fancy screen transitions are less important at this stage; it is more important to see how easy things are and if the app is intuitive to navigate. You’ll be able to visualise the flow of your app at a high level. If the navigation or screenflow seems confusing, boring, cumbersome or missing functionality, then it’s still early enough in the project to explore alternatives and make changes.

Stage Three:

In stage three we build a functioning prototype working with a basic slim back-end and we also construct the user-interface to look and feel like the finished product. This phase lets you really get a hands-on feel as how the app will look and feel and function.

Stage Four:

At this stage after both the planning, wireframe and prototype phases we can be pretty sure that the application is fit for delivery so we proceed onto building all the back-end code and database.

Depending on the size of the project we will also most likely break this down into multiple deliveries to you, so again you can get hands-on at the earliest stages possible.

User Acceptance Testing:

Throughout any deliveries and after final deliveries we give you access to our Jira Software Project Management platform so you can raise any issues or problems you encounter so we can act on those fast.

We are always on the end of a call, email or skype but to make sure nothing gets lost we use Jira to make sure all the detail gets recorded and acted on fast.

If you want to know more about what we do then feel free to message me or give me a call.