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During discussions on the enduring identity of a prototype the same counterpoint kept cropping up:

You should only write code once.

There's a prevailing belief that, in our lean workflow, we must be committed to our user stories before we enter them into Production, that it would be wasteful to create something, then change our minds and have to scrap it.

Why do we believe it to be wasteful?

We spend a lot of time sketching ideas at Made by Many. It's a powerful way to bring ideas to life quickly; to give them an identity and test with an objective audience.

To minimise our investment in any one idea, we use familiar, malleable tools - paper or Keynote usually win over - prototyping with the tools of production would come with too many engineering overheads, right?

We take an approach akin to scientific research to guide our product evolution: selecting an idea from a wall of post-it notes, prototyping and testing it, then discarding the prototype when the hypothesis is proven null.

It works, assuming we don't slide into inaction due to not being able to decide which idea to test, or are pushed there by Too Many Ideas during validation.

At Made by Many, we work at the intersection of business strategy, product design and software development. Strategists, like everyone else here, play an important role in all three of these disciplines.

As a strategist, your time is divided between existing and potential clients. The balance fluctuates over time, and you have to be equally comfortable with both.

For our current clients, you analyse, qualify, interpret and communicate their business (and political) objectives, both internally at Made by Many and externally within the client organisation. You identify new business models and work with clients to optimise existing ones. You also design, adapt and improve processes to ensure that Made by Many’s work is efficient and effective, and work with the management team to plan workstreams, structure project teams and build client relationships.

You also take responsibility for winning new business and the entirety of the process behind this. You seek out and develop relationships with potential clients, articulate and discuss Made by Many’s capabilities, and build and present proposals in consultation with the management team and our design and technology leadership.

We're looking for an experienced person to work as a tester across a number of projects. Our ideal would be someone who has worked in an agency atmosphere and is familiar with Agile methodologies and the challenges they can represent.  You should be comfortable with working in a flexible way and have the ability to adapt to project fluctuations.

We need someone to help us build a strong testing strategy and help improve current methods. You would play a vital role within development teams to collaborate in delivering strong products. You would also be able to help ensure the completeness of our test coverage and to automate test execution wherever possible.

You'd be working with a talented bunch of people (and a slightly deranged office dog), based at our canal-side offices in Islington.

Lately there has been a lot of discussion around conferences in the tech world and the amount of female representation on the panels. Whilst this has been an issue for years (check out this post by Sara Williams on our site from 2011 and make some time to read the great comments as well ).

The issue really came into the public domain recently when Rebecca Rosen wrote this piece on the Panel Pledge in The Atlantic. 

It's required a lot of secrecy here at Made by Many to keep it under wraps, but we're excited that the new ITV homepage went live earlier this week. Part of a complete rebrand of ITV, this has been a great opportunity to highlight the depth and breadth of ITV's content - showcasing the best of ITV right now whilst simultaneously reinforcing the broadcaster's new brand position: at the heart of popular culture.

The homepage is a result from collaboration between Made by Many and the in-house design and development teams at ITV.

We're looking for a senior designer (with at least 4 years experience) - a creative geek type obsessed with services, platforms and applications.

A couple of months ago I wrote a post introducing an idea of starting a new developer meet-up for front-end developers. Since then we've been working hard on organising our first event and at the end of last year we released the Front-end London website and tickets for the first event which will be hosted on the 17th January, here at the Made by Many office.

When iTunes 11 launched last week it restored all of my previous iTunes purchases via iCloud. My first purchase was made on the 9th of February 2007, I think that would have been made on my old (old) laptop whilst I was in University. I realised then that I hadn't 'purchased' an album, even in digital format for years. Back then I used to buy lots of vinyl (I still buy the occasional one) and I used one digital service model, iTunes and it suited me just fine. If someone had asked me if I wanted to start discovering, consuming and buying music in dozens of different ways I would have thought they were a bit strange. But, now I use these services and recognise the amazing value in them and a lot of that has to do with the devices I use. 

With names like 'Intergalactic Nostalgia', 'Fear Hive', 'Niche Idiot' and 'Artisanal Particle', it was a miracle to see what sensible propositions our teams came up with at last week's Internet Week experience prototyping workshop.

Panoramic shot, courtesy of @ninjabiscuit