What should I get at the end of a prototype project?

Question

Accepted Answer

Six things. Agree all of them before work starts rather than at handover, because handover is when they stop being negotiable. 1. The working prototype , in a form you can show people yourself, not only in a demo the agency runs for you. 2. A record of what real users did with it. Recordings or notes of actual sessions. What people did, not what they said they liked afterwards. 3. A clear statement of what was learned , including anything unwelcome. If the finding is that the idea has a problem, that is the most valuable thing you bought. 4. The list of what was deliberately not built. This is what makes the next phase quotable by anyone, and it is the first thing lost when nobody writes it down. 5. A view on what to build next, and what to drop. The output is evidence; the decision stays yours, but a supplier who has watched the tests should have an opinion. 6. Ownership of all of it : code in a repository you own, intellectual property assigned in writing, and hosting, domain and third party accounts in your name rather than the agency's. The sixth is the one that gets skipped, and it is the expensive one. The test question is simple: if we stopped working with you tomorrow, could another firm pick this up? A supplier who cannot answer yes has sold you a dependency, whether or not they meant to. Worth knowing what is not on the list: production grade engineering, security and compliance work, and long term maintenance. A prototype is built to answer a question and then be superseded. Paying for it to be robust enough for real customers means paying full build prices for something that was meant to be cheap. Read the full guide to what a prototype agency does → Talk to us about your idea →