Prototyping as a Leadership Tool

There's a common assumption that once you become an engineering director, you stop writing code. For many leaders, that's true. For me, it would be a mistake.

I don't write production code anymore — my team does that, and they do it well. But I prototype constantly. And those prototypes are the single most effective tool I have for driving technical decisions.

The Problem With Documents

I've written my share of architecture proposals, technical specifications, and strategy documents. They're necessary. They're also insufficient.

The issue is that documents are abstract. When you describe a proposed architecture in a document, every reader creates their own mental model of what it means. Those mental models diverge. By the time you get to implementation, half the team has a different understanding of what you proposed.

Enter the Prototype

A prototype eliminates ambiguity. When I build a working demonstration of a proposed approach — even a rough, ugly one — the conversation changes fundamentally.

Instead of "I think this architecture could work," it becomes "here, use it, try to break it, tell me what you think."

Some examples from my work:

Frontend migration. When I proposed moving our frontend to React/Next.js, I didn't write a proposal. I rebuilt one of our key workflows in the new stack over a week. Stakeholders could see and interact with the result. The decision was easy.

Event-driven pipeline. When I recommended RabbitMQ for our financial workflows, I built a prototype that demonstrated message routing, error handling, and retry logic with realistic data volumes. The team could see exactly how events flowed through the system.

Data migration strategy. For our $73M bank account migration, I prototyped the reconciliation engine first. This exposed three edge cases we hadn't considered in the design phase — edge cases that would have been expensive to discover during the actual migration.

How I Prototype

My approach is deliberately fast and dirty:

1. Time-box it. Prototypes get 2-5 days, max. If I can't demonstrate the concept in that timeframe, the concept is too complex and needs to be broken down.
2. Use the real stack. I prototype in the same technologies the team will use for production. This avoids the "well, that worked in the prototype but our stack is different" problem.
3. Focus on the risky parts. Don't prototype the parts you know will work. Prototype the parts you're uncertain about — the novel integration, the performance-critical path, the complex business logic.
4. Make it interactive. A prototype that someone can only watch me demo is less powerful than one they can use themselves. I aim for self-service whenever possible.

The Cultural Impact

Prototyping has a secondary benefit that's just as important as the technical validation: it builds trust.

When your team sees that you can still build things — that you understand the tools, the patterns, and the challenges they face — it changes the dynamic. You're not an out-of-touch manager making decisions from a conference room. You're a technical leader who gets it.

It also sets a cultural precedent. When the director prototypes before proposing, it signals that evidence-based decisions are valued. Teams start prototyping their own ideas. The quality of technical discourse goes up across the organization.

Know When to Stop

The danger of prototyping as a leader is the temptation to keep refining it. To make it production-ready yourself. To stay in the comfortable IC zone instead of doing the harder leadership work.

A prototype is a communication tool, not a delivery mechanism. Build it, demonstrate it, hand it off, and move on to the next decision that needs your attention.