PROTOTYPING IN INDUSTRIAL SOFTWARE PROJECTS - BRIDGING THE GAP BETWEEN THEORY AND PRACTICE

Prototyping, a method and technique frequently used in many engineerin g disciplines, has been adopted as a technique in software engineering to improve the calculation of new projects involving risks. However, there has so far been a lack of documented experience with the use of prototyping in industrial software production. The present work tries to close this gap. First, we introduce central prototyping concepts an d terminology. In the subsequent section we present five industrial so ftware projects in which explicit use was made of prototyping. Based o n our analysis of these projects we present the resulting conclusions: prototyping means more than rapidly developing user interfaces; proto typing is a central part of a development strategy; prototyping means end user involvement; finding the right mixture of prototypes improves the development process.