Every great product, service, business idea, and technology started with an unproven theory that was then tested and found to be viable. If you think you’ve concocted your industry’s next big thing, you’ll need to prove its viability to upper management, clients, or other stakeholders to get your go-ahead. That’s where a proof of concept template comes in. This valuable business tool helps you prove that your idea isn’t only possible, but also needed.
Today we’ll discuss how to use a proof of concept and introduce a free customizable template you can use to make the process easier. We’ll also share how pairing this template with monday.com’s Work OS can help simplify and optimize every stage of your idea, from inception and testing to development and completion.
What is a proof of concept template?
A proof of concept (POC) is a document providing evidence that an idea you had was viable and that there’s a need for it.
You can apply a proof of concept template to software and product development, a business idea, and more. Organizations often use this approach to determine the feasibility and profitability of concepts before moving forward with production. A template makes testing an idea and presenting it to the appropriate stakeholders simpler and more efficient than starting from scratch.
Why use a proof of concept template?
Using a POC template can help you:
- Ensure your idea can be successful: A POC allows you to test the idea you had to ensure it’s possible and profitable for your company or client. Ensuring an idea will work before beginning a project can save a lot of potentially wasted time, money, and effort.
- Determine idea feasibility faster: A POC template provides a foundation that lays out all the information you need to ensure your idea works in the real world. This is significantly faster and more efficient than starting your POC from scratch.
- Ensure you don’t miss any essential information: Since a template provides a uniform starting point for all your POCs, it ensures you don’t miss data or steps that could skew the results of your test, research, or working model.
To fully understand why you might want to use a proof of concept template, it might help to see some real-life examples of their uses.
What are some examples of proof of concept templates?
There are several situations where you may want to use a POC template to prove an idea. For example, you may use these templates to prove a business plan or product idea are viable for your company and target audience.
Business plan proof of concept
You might use a business plan POC when:
- You’re considering investing in a startup
- You acquire a company that’s already been built and believe its processes could use improvement
- You have ideas on how your company could improve internal processes to meet goals
- (As project managers) you have a project idea you believe would benefit your company
It helps to understand your success criteria before undertaking your testing and research, so you can make the clearest end decision.
Product idea proof of concept
You might use a POC to test your idea for a new product or service. You may find it helpful to work with team members who can provide additional subjective insight on the product during testing. When creating a product idea POC, remember to ask yourself:
- Why do our customers need this product? What problem does it solve for them?
- Will the product be profitable when comparing production costs versus selling price?
- What challenges might we face during production, marketing, or selling that need to be overcome?
When creating a POC, it helps to begin your work with a template.
Proof of concept templates on monday.com
You can use the monday.com proof of concept template to:
- Develop a uniformed POC process within your organization: Having a defined process for creating POCs can help upper management and other stakeholders make easier, more informed yes-or-no decisions on ideas. It also provides a transparent standard for success criteria for everyone involved in the ideation process.
- Reduce error and missing information risks: Clearly defined POC processes can help employees reduce error risks within their experiments and negate the possibilities of missing information that might skew the final results.
- Thoroughly display your evidence of viability: Our template has sections covering every part of discovering an idea’s feasibility, from a generalized overview to metrics, goals, constraints, and use cases. Using this template and filling it out in its entirety ensures your subsequent presentation will be thorough, professional, and unbiased.
You can use the proof of concept template inside monday.com’s Work OS to streamline your workflows at every stage of your idea’s journey, from inception and testing to marketing and beyond. Customizable dashboards allow you to see all your most pertinent information on one screen, using the view you like best – whether that be Kanban boards or Gantt charts. Optimized workflow scheduling allows you to easily assign tasks to your team members and track their progress towards meeting deadlines. Save time by automating routine tasks and approvals to decrease time spent daily on tedious jobs. Plus, monday.com has numerous templates besides the proof of concept that you can take advantage of.
Related templates on monday.com
Once you’ve got the green light on your idea, you can use related templates to flesh your products or processes out. Depending on the type of idea you developed in your POC, you might want to use our creative processes or product development templates to simplify your project moving forward.
Creative processes template
Our creative processes template can help you plan and manage creative ideation, like those revolving around content or design. Multiple views, including calendar and Kanban view options, allow you to see your workflow the way you prefer. Use the customizable template to assign creative tasks to qualified team members, store your project’s most essential documents, and set deadlines, so you can efficiently meet each one at or ahead of schedule. In addition, you can enable reminders to be sent to you and other team members when a publishing date is approaching.
Product development template
Our product development template allows you to plan and track your scrum iterations with ease, thus enabling faster to-market delivery of better products. Once you’ve got the green light on your product idea, you can flesh out your product business idea with this template and assign development, marketing, or production tasks to team members. Set deadlines and receive automatic notifications when they’re approaching to make staying on track for delivery easier. Plus, you can track where each task is in real time, address pain points, and communicate with other project managers as needed.
You likely have a working knowledge of POC templates by now and how they can help you prove the feasibility of your idea. However, we’ve answered a few FAQs in case you still have questions.
Frequently asked questions
What is a proof of concept?
A proof of concept (POC) provides evidence that a design concept or business proposal is feasible. Generally, a POC is derived from experiments, research, and pilot projects.
How do you make a POC presentation?
To make a POC presentation, you should demonstrate a need for the product, service, or project you’re presenting and show why your idea is the best solution. You might do this by creating and testing a prototype, gathering feedback, running surveys, and researching industry statistics. During your presentation, focus on your key details and leave room at the end for questions. You may find it helpful to use visual aids like bar graphs, circle diagrams, and slideshows during your presentation.
Prove your idea’s feasibility with a proof of concept template at monday.com
Every great product, service, and modern technology began as an untested idea that someone had to prove before bringing it to the public. You can use a successful POC template to demonstrate your newest idea’s feasibility and profitability to your company’s decision-makers, so you can make the next big thing happen. Using a template makes developing a POC simpler. Pairing that template with monday.com’s powerful Work OS can further optimize your efforts to test, design, manage, market, and complete your latest and greatest designs or ideas.
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