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You Really Won't Know Until You Build It

Building new software requires an estimate for the project owner how long it will take (and how much it will cost). This is one of the dark arts in System Architecture. Unless you repeat a previous exercise 100% you are limited to guesstimates. And you NEVER repeat a previous project 100%, since there would be no need, just use last times results.And guesstimates are a waste of time!
On my Sunday blog tour (while Anthony and Ernest mess up the house <g>) I came across a very true quote:
" We spent so much time arguing whether or not it work, and when we prototyped it, it worked remarkably well. We could have saved so much time, if we had just build it sooner." Another reason to do paper prototyping.

Posted by Stephan H Wissel on 10 April 2005 | Comments (2) | categories: Software WebDevelopment

Comments

posted by Peter Norton on Wednesday 14 December 2005 AD:
You don't have to do nesesary paperprototyping, you can use GUI prototyping tool such as PETRA here is the link: http://www.cleverlance.cz/en/Products/Petra/Petra_lite/screenshots_demos/
posted by Stephan H. Wissel on Wednesday 14 December 2005 AD:
Hi Peter,
thx for the link. I appreciate this kind of feedback. I will have a look. There are a number of prototyping tools around. Another example is Denim: http://dub.washington.edu/denim/
As long as the tools are around is the discussion if paper or tool is the way to go. Both approaches warrant merits of their own. I don't need to talk about the tools advantage, you probably would know yourself. The paper approach shines here:
- Unbeatable turnanround time (e.g. Typo: take a pencil and fix it < 1sec, entry field missing: take the pencil, draw a box < 1sec, additional cross-link: < 1sec).
- Unfinished look : better user feedback
- Easy to learn
- Haptic : People need to do physical action to prepare and do it --> speeds thinking
- slow test : a lot of interaction time to get to know the user and their needs

Just my 2c
stw