Leading to PoC Success: The Importance of Purpose Clarification and Verification Content
PoC (Proof of Concept) is widely used as a method to evaluate new IT products and services. PoC means “concept verification” and is a process to confirm the performance and functions of new products/services through actual trial use, and to determine whether to implement them.
However, amid the proliferation of PoCs, it’s not uncommon to wonder “what was the purpose of this PoC in the first place?” In a challenging business environment, we want to avoid wasting time and costs spent on PoC.
Three Points for Meaningful PoC Operation
- Clarify verification items and purpose
- Establish evaluation metrics and judgment criteria
- Consider how to utilize the obtained results
It’s important to focus on these points and invest the necessary resources. Without clear objectives and evaluation criteria, no matter how many PoCs are conducted, they cannot be utilized as requirements definition or decision-making material.
Common PoC Failure Patterns
For example, suppose a service A has functions from 1 to 10. When conducting a PoC for this service, many cases try all functions to determine if they can be used, but this often leads to failure. This is because the purpose of PoC is not just to confirm functions, but to confirm effectiveness and necessity.
- Focus on confirming effectiveness, not just functionality
Whether functions can be used can be confirmed through sales representatives or screens from the service provider. It’s meaningless to just pay to confirm this.
- Verification in an environment close to the production environment is necessary, but this can be a source of mistakes.
In PoC (Proof of Concept), verification in an environment that follows existing business flows is essential, but verification in an environment close to the production environment alone is insufficient. This is because, even though it’s close to the production environment, it’s artificially created and merely confirms functions there. In reality, it’s important not only to confirm functions by deploying in the field but also to measure effectiveness and confirm actual usage situations after service implementation.
It might be a bit difficult to understand, but for example, have you ever had the experience of seeing a product in a store, thinking “that looks useful, I want it,” but then finding that you never use it at home and it just gets in the way?
PoC is an initiative to prevent such situations.
Maximizing the Significance of PoC
It’s important to confirm how the service will be used according to actual business flows at the PoC stage. Everyone has experienced seeing a product that seemed useful in the store, but hardly using it after bringing it home. Similarly, the key in PoC is to determine whether it will actually be used.
Implement PoC correctly and obtain meaningful results to aid in the final implementation decision. Grasp the points to avoid wasting costs and achieve meaningful PoC, leading to success.