A proof-of-concept is one of the most misused things in enterprise tech. I’ve watched plenty of them turn into weeks of work that prove almost nothing, and I’ve slowly figured out why.
A POC is not a small version of the product. It’s a test of the one thing you’re most afraid is true.
Every serious solution has a load-bearing assumption. Can this actually handle our data volume? Will it integrate with the system nobody wants to touch? Is the latency tolerable when it’s real traffic, not a demo? A good POC finds that assumption and goes straight at it. Everything else is noise you can leave for later.
The trap is that the load-bearing assumption is usually the hard, unglamorous one, and it’s tempting to build the easy, impressive parts instead. You end up with a slick demo that dodged the only question that mattered. It proves the team can build something. It doesn’t prove the thing will work.
So the question I keep coming back to in scoping a POC is almost rude in its simplicity: what are we most afraid of, and does this test it? If the answer is no, we’re not de-risking anything. We’re just building a prettier version of our own optimism.
This is the kind of thinking I came up through on the solutioning side. The next thing I want is to be the person who can actually build the POC, not just frame it. That part I’m still working on.