What is the difference between proof of concept and prototype




















Definition of MVP guide will help you get more useful information about the minimum viable product. The distinctive feature of a minimum viable product is quality. Many people mistakenly think that an MVP is a raw version of an application. But believing this will only lead to failure. MVP implies a simple product, but at the same time, it must be of high quality to interest the target audience.

This includes easy navigation, beautiful design, and an intuitive interface. MVP implies a set of minimal functions that should interest the target audience.

Despite its limitations, this is a complete product designed to assess the market reaction. Users' feedback will determine the fate of the product.

A proof-of-concept POC is an approach that a development team uses to test the feasibility of a particular technical feature. However, this concept is not only widely used in IT. It is also prevalent in other industries, such as mechanical engineering or film production. A POC intends to confirm that the implementation will work as planned. For example, the team is going to use relatively complex technology.

To make sure they can handle this, developers build critical parts of the system using chosen technology. It is also an excellent opportunity to share experiences within the team. In the case of a POC, only basic parts are created, not the entire system. It helps assess the practicality of the idea and calculate the risks before starting the main development stage.

It is worth noting that the POC is not a full-fledged product. These are only some parts of the functionality of the intended system. It will never be put on the market as it is. A proof of concept is developed for internal use by a company to draw specific technical conclusions.

It also serves to test ideas that are not yet well developed in the market. For example, if you want to build a social network, there is no point in a proof-of-concept. Since the steps and the technological stack have been known for a long time. But if you have an unusual idea that has not yet become widespread, the POC concept should definitely be implemented.

A prototype is an attempt to visualize a business idea. It reflects the main functions of the product and can be prepared in any form. The prototype can be either drawn on paper or made as a functional application. Moreover, the prototype is still not a full-fledged product but only a simplified version.

Prototypes are relatively fast and inexpensive to implement. They allow you to evaluate design and functionality, get feedback from a control group, and use resources efficiently. But it is still far from the end product in terms of design, usability, and functionality. The prototype is tested on a small group of potential users and should not be introduced to the market, as it is still a crude model.

It can also be tested internally. The main task is to understand how convenient and interesting it will be for the target audience to work with the product. When developing a prototype, you can make as many changes and improvements to the concept as you want before the product is completed. This is pretty convenient as it minimizes errors and increases the success of an app launch. In addition, you receive feedback from real people, thus getting the opportunity to improve your business idea quickly.

Both of these concepts are used to draw specific conclusions before creating a multifunctional product. A proof of concept aims to verify certain information for internal use by the development team, while the purpose of an MVP is to test the market. The main difference between MVP and POC is that the second represents only a particular part of the system, or rather its basic features.

It has no design and, in general, is not yet ready to be used by clients. While it has most of the functions as a basic product, it does not contain all the features, but instead, just the basic functions that the final product should have. A working prototype is the version of the product which has almost the exact content as the final product, just need to be a bit polished.

It is often used for pre-release testing, so the company could get proper feedback on whether the product is ready for the release or not.

If everything works properly and the testing phase is completed without any problems, then the working prototype is upgraded to the full product, which is followed by the final release on the market.

The task of a visual prototype is not to represent all the basic functions of the product, but instead, to show how would the final product look like.

This type of prototype is used to give feedback about what do customers and users think about it, how they feel when using it. Hence, it has to have all the basic functions of the final product, as well as most of the intended look which the final product would have.

That way, users could test the product and its basic functions and give proper feedback on whether it is good enough for the release or not. A functional prototype is used to represent nearly finished products.

It should look almost the same as the final product and have all the basic functions as well. This is used in very early stages of development and it should represent all the basic functions and appearance drawn out on the paper. It is very useful for the presentation of your ideas about new products because it is much cheaper and cost-efficient than making a proof of concept or simple prototype.

If approved, then the company can move on and make other types of prototypes, depending on what they need. In engineering, term prototype is used to represent the fully functional product, with the label of being an experimental version of the final product, with the need for testing and balancing certain features until it is ready to be massively produced. When it comes to the engineering of electronics, the prototype is used to describe a not fully finished product made according to certain theoretically designed sketch, which is followed with a proper tool used for dealing with bugs and similar issues.

That type of tool is, for example, Fritzing , which is used to list certain prototypes and help with their possible production. By using this platform, an engineer could make a prototype very fast and then add the features that are supposed to be included later in order to test the product.

In computer science prototype is used to describe the product that is in some testing phase, which means that it is not yet fully ready for the official release, because it requires a lot of testing, bug fixing and dealing with the optimization issues. The first phase is usually the Alpha version, which contains very basic functions, and is used to solve any possible problems that may occur with the very basic functions. After the alpha phase, the software enters beta phase, which is a version very closely tied to the final product, and it is there to make sure that everything works fine, by allowing groups of people to test it and give their feedback.

When the feedback comes back positive and developers decide it is the time to release the product, then the beta phase is over and the prototype becomes the full product. It could be different than the version from the early stages, but it should be more polished and user-friendly. Scale modeling is a very funny and interesting field, where the various models of vehicles, planes, trains and much more are made. The word prototype is used here to represent what is the source material used for making these models, which means that the word prototype describes the real plane, the real car that is used to make the model.

Since the beginning of 3D printing in , this has become a much easier task to do and is generally very interesting to see some of the models. This field is very important when it comes to managing human activities because it is used to link those that can be linked and it helps us understand the most common use of units. When it comes to metrology, a word prototype describes an object that is being generally used to represent the standard measuring unit of a certain quantity, which would allow us to have all our measurement-based around it.

There it is used to describe the certain disease, life form or just a type of species that could be set as a good example for the specific category. For example, it is often used to represent the most primitive form of some specific species, on, in other words, an archetype of any of those groups. As we have already mentioned this above, proof of concept can be considered as a pre-prototype project, because it is not used to tell us how to build the feature we want to include in the product, but instead, it is used to tell us if it is at all possible to make that change and have a working product at the same time.

So, if you want to test a certain idea you may have, the best thing to do is to make a proof of concept. It may seem to you that you would be wasting money on building something which may or may not work at all, but it is actually the other way around. Because if it turns out to be a bad idea, then you will not make a prototype and save your money.

And if it turns out to be a very useful idea, you could spend a bit of money to build a working prototype and polish the functions, which would grant you more money in the future. It is also used to help us make a decision about whether to include certain features or not, but prototype does not focus on the one specific aspect of the product, but rather on the full functionality of all included features. Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own. You're reading Entrepreneur India, an international franchise of Entrepreneur Media.

More About Prototypes. Product Development. Entrepreneur Store Jul 11, Prepare to Succeed. Onega Ulanova Apr 1, Rashan Dixon Jun 10, Latest on Entrepreneur. Prabhjeet Bhatla Oct 26, Business Growth. Shrabona Ghosh Oct 26, Facebook Twitter LinkedIn.



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