What is a Rapid Prototype?

Simply put, rapid prototypes are models of a system or product that are, well, rapid. You can make them in a few different ways.  Throw-away prototypes are intended to give high-level views of what something will include, how it will work, and maybe a little what it will look like. As the name implies, they’re meant to be thrown away and replaced with something a little better, so they may even be paper or whiteboard sketches that get increasingly detailed. Evolutionary prototypes may one day be a final product. They also change over time, but usually include actual working elements of the finished product that are refined and developed as you go. Many Agile prototypes are evolutionary from the beginning, for instance. So where does the rapid part come in? In both cases, speed is important. The prototype is created, tested and reviewed, and then changed, repeating quickly. This may happen as often as twice a week, and as seldom as every two weeks for large or complex projects. A good rule of thumb might be, just a little faster than feels comfortable. This tends to focus a team on making decisions and nailing down problems quickly, which makes actual production much easier.

The Rapid Prototyping Process

Ideally, the rapid prototyping process has the following steps:

Identify users. Who are the people who are going to use your product? What are they like, how do they work, and what will they be trying to accomplish? This can and should include actual user research, if possible.




Gather requirements. From a business standpoint, what will your system have to do? How does this relate to what you learned about your users?

Model the interface. Decide which of the two styles of prototype you’d like to make, and then make one. Usually it’s good to start with a presentation layer (an idea of the ‘look and feel’), a navigation model (a map of how the user will get around the application), and various screens she’ll see when she uses it. What tools do you use to do this? It’s up to you. Many famous designers begin with pencil and paper–sketching activates both sides of your brain, which is especially important at the beginning. You can then move to more sophisticated tools like Visio, Balsamiq, Omnigraffle, or Axure to make more detailed changes as you go along.

Prototype the system. Now model the system itself, just as you did for the interface. What is it going to do?

Test. Now test your work with actual users. See how they react to the model and think about the ways they get things done.  You can do this in a fancy lab, but with a little effort you can also get good results using paper prototypes in which one person ‘plays the role of the computer.’ (Carolyn Snyder’s Paper Prototyping and Steve Krug’s Don’t Make Me Think are great for this.)

Repeat. Now, using what you learned, make changes to your prototype and repeat the process. Keep going a few rounds until things start to ‘feel right’ about what works and what doesn’t. Usually you’ll know when this happens. Just make sure you don’t quit too early.

So Why Prototype?

So why prototype in the first place? Isn’t it just easier to start building something? (This is usually what your developer will want to do.)

Save time and money. By prototyping, you uncover big problems fast–sometimes when they’re only marks on paper.  You need an eraser to fix those, not two months, five engineers, and $300,000. This saves time and money, and sometimes a career. Just think…would you just go out and start building a car? Lots of useful systems are at least that complicated. Prototype first and reduce the hassle.

Get famous. ‘Buy-in’ isn’t always the right term…the right prototype can not only convince people you’re going in the right direction, it can win you their admiration and undying support. It’s always a good idea to make sure that what’s in the CEO’s head resembles what your team is building…and you might even be able to show her something better than she thought of in the first place. Besides, if she sees how the product is growing from step to step and approves each piece, she’s going to get personally invested in its success whether she knows that or not.

Build a killer team. Prototypes work best when a group of people is dedicated and focused on one thing: a great model of what will be a great product.  The very process of prototyping can bring a team closer together…or reveal problem areas that should be fixed. Either way, a tightly-knit team makes things a lot better, and a lot more fun.

Make the right thing. By studying real users and what they want, you’re much, much more likely to build a product that will succeed. Even better, you’ll know that your assumptions about how people use the product will be pretty solid. For most interactive products, that is literally a million-dollar advantage.

Rapid prototyping is common at the biggest, savviest companies, but not necessarily as common elsewhere. But it’s worth a try, at the very least to get agendas and assumptions on the table. In a time of tight budgets and tighter schedules, it can be the difference between success and failure.  What do you think? Any questions about how it works? Any stories about your use of prototyping? Or do you want some tips about your specific situation? Let us know below!

• How are organizations integrating social media into the value of their products and services?
• How do we decide what to do with social media?
• What happens when the boss says, ‘Do it,’ and we don’t have the resources and aren’t clear why we should?
• How to build communities w/social tools?

Your Turn–What’s On Your Mind With Social Media?

What’s on your mind this year in terms of your experience with social media? As an organization, how are you using it? Any stories to share? Any insights on the questions above, or questions of your own? Let us know below!

• What work needs to be done going from no CMS to SharePoint to configure, plan, arrange for migration of content so that it is then targeted, searchable, effective, etc. (and from cleaning up the content)?
• How can CMS platforms improve such that upfront time/money/effort is reduced (e.g., new features, different approaches, better knowledge, etc.)?
• How does a Web CMS vendor differentiate itself in a saturated market?

Web Content Management–Now It’s Your Turn

What’s on your mind this year in terms of your CMS? Have you been having concerns like the ones above, or different ones?  Any answers or insights so far? Let us know below.

• What is the difference between an acceptable web strategy and a kickass one? How does one make a kickass web strategy?
• How can we get top management to truly realize the potential of online [sic]?
• How do you get people to do what you know will help them (what they know will help them) but they have no interest in putting effort into?
• What do you do to keep the web top-of-mind for senior leadership?
• Why is digital strategy still so hard – should it be getting easier and better defined?
• How to use awareness in management for your projects?
• How to create a good user experience that mixes both online and offline strategies?
• Will we finally stop focusing on the tools and care about the solutions and humans?
• How do you keep up with technology changes? How do you encourage users to participate?
• What is the measure of success for the web?

Strategy–Now It’s Your Turn

What’s on your mind this year? Have you been having concerns like the ones above, or different ones? Any answers or insights so far? Let us know below.

<h2>Top Down Governance</h2>

The first model, Top Down, is unusual but potentially very powerful. It describes an organization in which the highest levels of leadership make decisions about web content and direction. Given that the web is still not mature in the vast majority of industries, the Top Down model means that the web may be in better shape in terms of getting the resources, support, and understanding that it needs in an organization. Furthermore, in some organizations the top may be the only place capable of driving change and innovation.

<h2> Bottom Up Governance </h2>

Bottom Up governance is more common. In this model, lower-level people, many of whom may have more specialized expertise and experience than an organization’s leaders, organize (perhaps with outside consultants and other experts) to provide web suggestions to leadership. This model can work well insofar as it enables both the ‘web folks’ and senior leadership to act most efficiently: web people to work out the details, leadership to make it happen. Dangers, of course, come when leaders don’t buy into a recommendation…or, worse, fail to see its importance.

<h2> Organic Governance </h2>

Fortunately or unfortunately, the Organic model is probably the most common model for web governance overall. It is often the result of a broken Bottom Up attempt–when recommendations go unrecognized, many ‘people in the trenches’ will band together informally and make their own decisions to keep things going.  Or, for small organizations or organizations still finding their feet online, it can make the most sense. Disputes need to be settled and decisions need to be made, and oftentimes people doing the work won’t have the time or energy to seek approval to create formal policy.

<h2>Your Turn–What’s Your Governance? </h2>

How are the rules made for your organization’s web? Who makes decisions, and who gets to offer input and advice? How well do the rules work? What happens in case of conflict? How does your governance model affect what you do and the resources you get to do it? Let us know below!

Why Social Business?

Despite the newness of social media, there are already problems in practice. Social media doesn’t always scale well–it’s wonderful if your CEO sends tweets, but what does she do when 100,000 fans of your brand want to tweet back? Social media can also be hard to control. Who gets to start a Facebook group in your company, and who decides what it says? And what about privacy issues and identity theft? How do you get your arms around all of this?

Integrate With Social Business

According to Pete, social business can integrate the myriad of social media and technology options and answer questions about rules and governance. To do this, it’s important to keep four things in mind: connections, culture, communications, and content. Who are you connecting to? Do you have a culture that supports openness, or are you more siloed? What methods are you using, or would like to use, to communicate your message? Last but certainly not least, what is your message?

How to Get it Done

So how do you put this into practice? As always, the best starting place is to ask the right questions.

1. First and foremost, why do you want to get into social at all? In other words, how does conducting social business specifically help your business reach its goals? ‘Because everyone else is doing it’ is probably not the best answer.
2. What is your ‘listening landscape’? In other words, what are people already saying about you? Companies are often afraid of negative comments…but different comments may be more tricky. Suppose you think of your shoe brand as about extreme fun…and your fans just want to talk about how comfortable your products are. How will this affect you and your efforts?
3. What are your competitors doing? More importantly, how is this actually working for them? A little digging can work wonders here.
4. Who will own the social business? What kinds of rules and governance need to be set up?
5. Who gets to make final decisions in case of a dispute? Can anyone start a Facebook group? If not, how will this affect your communication?
6. How will these efforts be measured, and what will be measured? This may be the most difficult, and yet the most rewarding, question of all.
7. Finally, what kind of technology will help you to bring all this about? What should you own and what should you lease or outsource?

As the world gets increasingly networked and computers become smaller and vastly more powerful, social media will continue its explosive growth. Managing this well will be a lasting competitive advantage in the next decade. Social business is the place to start.

The Jetlag Reception is an informal get-together open for those who have arrived early; a glass of wine and nibbles and some good conversations. Some participants, including myself, might still be a bit jet-lagged from long flights.

For those of you who are joining us for the first time, I would like to stress that the conference has two dimensions:

• The formal part of workshops, presentations and round-tables, etc.
• The professional networking part of organized evening events.

Both are important components in the conference experience. Past delegates have told me repeatedly that they find as much value in the second dimension as in the first! They are always especially pleased to be able to have face-to-face conversations with the speakers, many of whom they consider to be “stars” in their respective domains.

The speakers themselves find a lot of value (including sometimes new customers!) at the evening events.

On behalf of the J. Boye team, I really look forward to spending the week with you in Philadelphia and very much hope that you will take advantage of this special aspect of our conference and join us for at least the early part of each evening!

We are sure you will find it both fun and worthwhile!

Since the Philadelphia 2009 conference, SilverStripe managed to make it into the the second annual 2009 Open Source CMS Market Share Report published by CMS Wire with water & stone, an APAC-based interactive agency. While market share numbers are very difficult to track in this industry, the report consisted of 20 of the most significant open source systems. Across several charts, SilverStripe scored somewhat similar to eZ Publish and Umbraco in terms of rate of adoption and brand strength.

As a corporate-backed product based on PHP, SilverStripe might be most easily compared to eZ. With 40 employees today (roughly 30 a year ago), SilverStripe remains around half as big as eZ in terms of head count.

So, why did the DNC choose SilverStripe? You can read the background on the seemingly unlikely selection of an open source package from New Zealand in a posting on Why the 2008 Democratic National Convention used SilverStripe. A great win for SilverStripe surely, but from my perspective, I could not find any unique reasons that could not have lead to the selection of competing open source packages.

SilverStripe was recognized at the 2009 New Zealand Internet Industry Awards. Is this a project you need to take serious beyond the Kiwi shores?

References is a key ingredient when assessing whether there is a viable community as these add experience and can share the hard lessons learned. Unfortunately I too often meet WCM buyers who did not take the time to talk to references before they selected a CMS. Many are subsequently caught by surprises they could easily have avoided by speaking to other customers. We have shared a few case studies on our blog, e.g. on how Danish Rail use EPiServer for their website and keep SharePoint behind the firewall or DIY SharePoint as a local council.

An active developer network is something only very few web content management vendors have. The few that alive ones tend to be full of hidden gems. On one side, the big vendors such as IBM, Microsoft and Oracle have massive and overwhelming developer offerings, while many of the dedicated WCM vendors, such as Alterian and FatWire have very little. Developers are the real key to success as I wrote recently, but few WCM vendors have managed to make their developer communities come alive and be accessible.

Partners can be tricky for a buyer. You might see claims such as EPiServer with 30+ new partners in the US in the last 12 months or Sitecore with a 100+ long listing of US partners on their website, but how many of these are really active and experienced with more than one successful project under their belts? System integrators can take all the money in the project and you are left with the bill.

On Wednesday May 5th in Philadelphia, you can attend the web content management track and join the final session for a panel discussion on whether the community might be more important than the CMS? The 3 experienced panelists are:

• Nathan Bittinger, technical director at Siteworx, a US interactive agency
• Niels Hartvig, founder of the open source Umbraco WCM project
• Tom Wentworth, VP Web Solutions at Ektron

I’ll moderate the panel and I’m hoping for a lively and constructive discussion. As always, feel free to post your comments below or follow the conversation on Twitter using #jboye10.

Now 12 months later, EPiServer has announced its intention to go public and the US operation has grown to a team of almost 10 employees, signed up 30+ partners and several customers.  EPiServer now confidently and in true American style claims to be “the world’s fastest growing WCM vendor”. From the buyer’s perspective this statement is impossible to validate, but the growth for EPiServer, in particular in the US, is very visible.

Competing with EPiServer in the crowded US marketplace for .NET content management systems are other European vendors such as Kentico, Sitecore, Telerik, Tridion (SDL) and open source Umbraco. Among the US-vendors Ektron is one of the main players in the space.

For prospective CMS buyers, my advice is that both a local vendor team and experienced local partners are really important. At the moment far from all 30+ US partners have got strong EPiServer project experience under their belts, although this might change rapidly.

Equally important is a local community of customers. EPiServer has been serious about building their community for several years and has almost 10,000 registered members on their EPiServer world.  Even though the US based community is growing fast, and everything you need is available in English, the vast majority of the community members are still European.

You can meet EPiServer at our conference in Philadelphia and learn more about their US growth plans.