One of the founding principles of both Design Thinking and Agile Methodology is that the development team should be able to test their prototype as soon as possible in order to assess –

1. How close is the prototype to the goals identified?
2. What changes are required?
3. Does the team need to go back to the drawing board?

In the assessment mentioned above, it is evident that testing plays a very crucial role. However, the depth and breadth of the testing depends on the status of the prototype. If the prototype is just a car’s body, mileage cannot be a testing criterion.

Consider a report to be developed giving ALV output. The entire prototype doesn’t have to be a working report. It can be just an excel sheet mimicking system data. The testing scope would be limited to following –

1. What fields are required?
2. What should be the data format?

Once this phase is done, a basic ALV report can be prepared with basic data being pushed skipping the validations. The testing scope in this phase would be limited to –

1. Is the Selection Screen acceptable?
2. Is Output Display acceptable?

In the third phase, the complete report with all applicable validations is developed and sent for final testing.

More in the second part.

~S