Proof of concepts A.K.A POC are quite popular to show your user/customer the possibility and give them a feel and experience of how a big project can look like before committing for it with resources and time.
It is very common in consulting companies that people use POC not only to validate an idea but also to learn technology. You will get a hands-on experience of the technology on a smaller scale which will help you understand the end-to-end inner working of it and give you the confidence to work with it.
Here are our Top 7 Tips to make awesome PoC, may it be UI5 or any other like (Angular, Node, Backbone etc.)
Also, check our previous blog if you just started learning UI5 and want some pointers to know 7 best websites while learning UI5
1.Focus on the problem :
Rule #1 is to understand why you are making your POC ? Apart from learning the technology, understand the functional working of it so you can make it meaningful for customers or users.
2. You don’t need to do everything :
You are not in a project but a POC, the data can be like:
{
“Name” : “Some Name”,
“Date”: “Some Date”,
“Age”: “000”,
}
In real projects all details should meet with exact level of accuracy but in POC you can be a little relaxed. This removes a big burden from your shoulder because getting those details right is a tedious task and devil is always there in details and you can skip that devil now 😀
3.Good artist copy, but Great artist steal :
The open source community is huge and they are motivated by the desire to share. You will be suprised by the kind of projects and code which are available online for free. Check MIT project. repo, GIT hub, Google Projects they are filled with gems, all you need is understand how to use it and most importantly is it useful in your application ? Keep in mind that you should not add the feature just to add the feature but the main focus should always be in solving the problem.
4.Make multiple iteration :
When you start working on the technology for the first time then it will surely happen that you will mess up a lot so be prepared to have many versions of your app like :
appV01
appV02
appV03
…
appVPleaseGodMakeItWork !
5.It is not only ok but good practice to show your ugly uncompleted project to your user:
We are not Leonardo Da-vinci so we should stop acting like him. A feedback in middle of development from your user will give you necessary validation if you are on right track or not which will save your valuable time and keep the project useful for your users or customers.
Always appreciate your users feedback, the philosophy that your user don’t know much about technology and might not know what you are doing has only worked well for Steve Jobs.
6.Do not spend time in reinventing the wheel :
In a PoC, you are trying to do a lot of stuffs with new paradigm and technology but you should not go into the trap of trying to solve something which is already solved the best way or available for free to use.
Two of my previous attempt where to spend time to make a database when I was making a work permit management POC app and the other one is to make a web dispatcher when I was making a shipment POC app.
These subproject where complete project in itself and took a lot of my time which might not be a waste but was hard to justify to stake holders.
7.Speak like a human in your POC presentation :
After months or weeks of effort when you are going to show your work to stakeholders don’t speak the language of aliens in presentation. They are seeing it for the first time, so make it sound human and useful, also don’t let your managers to take all your credit too 😉
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