Your Boss

  • Loves to understand the deliverable and be able to decide on changes before investing time in expensive coding.
  • Makes sure he knows what he is getting early on.
  • Gets to see something working early on.
  • Gets to sign off on a product he is happy with with far less investment up front.

Your User

  • Can try out and give feedback on whether the solution will fix his/her problem.
  • Gains confidence in the product that is being built and becomes invested in its success.
  • Understands the system as it’s being developed, reducing the need for training.
  • Gets a better product when all is complete.

Your Developer

  • Has a great visual starting point to work from and gets to build their architecture from a detailed set of requirements.
  • Has reduced rework and less goalpost moving, making development less frustrating.
  • Helps understand the UI, features and error cases in far greater details.

Your QA Lead

  • Can start building UI test cases as soon as development starts, making the code more stable and creating less deadline pressure.
  • Has a detailed set of functionality from which to build and automate test cases
  • Can consider all the fail points and look at error messages, cases and other edge cases in a more graphical way.

Your Project Manager

  • Can be used as a basis for doing work breakdown structures, story points or other project estimation techniques.
  • Makes projections up to 50% more accurate.

Your Salesman

  • Can easily use prototypes in sales pitches.
  • Working prototypes are more likely to wow a client than elaborate documentation and sales patter.
  • Its cheaper than doing a sales doc and engages potential customers far more effectively.

Yourself

  • Can try out multiple ideas in rapid succession.
  • Gets valuable customer feedback on the design.
  • Can be confident that the best solution is being offered to the customers and users.
  • Finally, prototyping is far more fun than making design specs no-one reads.