0:17
When it comes to software development, there are two basic camps, Agile and
Waterfall.
As this graph shows, Waterfall method does not allow you to ship
your final product until it's complete, until the end of the cycle.
But one long cycle, you're shipping product at the end.
0:38
This means you are taking a little bit of risk early,
spending a little bit of money.
The dice represent risk.
You're taking a little bit of risk, little more in the middle.
But then you're taking a huge amount of risk at the end.
Your client hasn't seen the product until it's already been six months and
you've spent thousands of your team's hours of time.
And then your client gets a chance to give you feedback on it.
1:09
Waterfall is the old-fashioned way of doing software development.
Most teams now use Agile.
Now, Agile system, you're shipping your product early.
Now, it's not going to be your perfect product.
You know that, and
you also tell your client, I'm sending you something early for feedback.
I'm taking a moderate risk here, that there's a moderate chance of failure.
But it's not going to cost me a lot of money,
so I'm reducing my risk in that way.
I'm reducing the consequences of failure.
Once you have that product,
give me some feedback on it we'll send another version in a little while.
So in the medium time scale we've sent a second version, taking a little more risk,
but less than the first time, cuz we've learned some now, and still a low cost.
And then the third section there, that third phase,
I'm gonna send you the final product.
But you've already seen a couple of versions of it and I've gotten
feedback from you, but still a really low risk and a relatively low cost of failure.
So I can probably keep on iterating if you want me to.
I'm not worried this is gonna be the first time you see this because I've been
prototyping.
I've been rapid prototyping along the way, and gotten feedback from my user,
from my client.
2:27
Mobile phone applications are really good about this.
Here's a screenshot from my smartphone, and
you can see all of the apps that I've downloaded, that are sending updates.
Every single day I get updates on these apps.
Now, I probably have dozens and dozens of apps on my smartphone.
2:47
But each of them, even Gmail,
you can see there, is sending me a new version of it regularly.
They are essentially rapidly prototyping,
sending a version that they know is not complete, it's not gonna be perfect.
And that's okay, because the cost for them to send another version Is almost zero.
They learn a little bit and they send another version.
They learn a little bit and they send another version.
They're rapidly prototyping with SaaS, Software as a Service.
3:24
plastic toy with some users or a plastic device, let's say.
You needed to create these steel forms for injection molding.
They're molds.
And you would pay someone in China to model them, make them,
probably carve them, and then have this final version.
It might cost you 70,000, or $100,000 to create the for
the molds for a device like you see there.
3:52
After that you can start producing units, and so you get this economy of scale.
The more you make, you make maybe 10,000 units,
that's when you start learning about how users interact with it.
Today, in one afternoon, you can print something like this maybe for $50 worth
of plastic resin and then quickly get it into the hands of a user for testing.
4:15
This enables rapid prototyping.
Rapid because creating the molds and
producing your first 10,000 units could be an 18-month process.
Or here you've got a 6-hour process and you can quickly get feedback.
One person who did this really well was a company I met in Chicago at that Toys and
Games Innovation Summit, one of my fellow inventors.
It's a company called Grid Box Design.
4:43
This guy produced prototypes
of several games that he'd invented using a 3D printer.
You would never know that they were just prototypes.
They were so realistic, really thought this must be one,
and he probably got boxes of them under the table for sale.
Really they were the only copies that he had.
But they were so realistic he was able to quickly
prototype them to take action with his game idea and
get feedback on it from game publishers who are attending that event.
We talked about Agile software development versus the old-fashioned Waterfall method.
We talked about SaaS, software as a service and
how they constantly send updates rapidly prototyping their product.
Then we talked about 3D printing.
Dr. Thomas J. MierzwaLecturer of Technology Entrepreneurship
