Selling the prototype

Prototypes are fine as proofs of concept, but not what is delivered to a customer.

There must still be a flexible top-down architecture, that is re-factored as required. This is because the most times a product changes is leading up to the first and second released versions. Without a flexible architecture, every iteration will involve too much rework on too many parts of the product.

This is especially important if doing customisations for different clients. Poor class or modular design will result in too many having to be changed for each client. This can happen for products where the prototype is sold but not enough time is allocated to making it production-ready.

Use prototypes just for testing out the feasibility of a design aspect, and AI may help with this. When wanting good info to be able to accurately plan moving forward, take a representative module and design it properly from top to bottom. This will also flush out many issues that may affect the overall design, thus saving a lot of rework that would have occurred across the whole product otherwise.

Architecting may take extra time, but it does involve just a few core people, rather than having lots of developers wasting time and money to do unnecessary rework, or worse, lots of wasted support time and disgruntled customers.

This is not about full-blown TOGAF (which gets real information-dense just drilling down one level), but having a practical approach to design and development.