DoD Prototyping Guidebook

​The Department of Defense Prototyping Guidebook is issued by the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering's Prototypes and Experiments office.

Components of the U.S. military have benefited from the use of prototyping for decades. Many of these organizations and their SMEs have developed processes, methods, and tools that have helped them succeed in their efforts. This prototyping guidebook attempts to capture and consolidate these approaches, best practices, and recommendations into a single reference document for DoD. It is a living document and will be updated periodically to ensure that direction captured from governing documents is current and best practices are fresh. 

This guidebook is intended to be used by DoD research and acquisition professionals conducting prototyping projects along the full spectrums of the science and technology (S&T), research and development (R&D), and acquisition lifecycle domains, including those inside DoD programs of record (PoR), in support of DoD PoRs, and independent of DoD PoRs. This guidebook is also intended to be used as an introductory and reference document by staff officers seeking to increase their knowledge of prototyping.

This guidebook is not policy or directive in nature, and it does not supersede DoD, Military Service, or defense agency policy pertaining to acquisitions or prototyping. It is not a substitute for Defense Acquisition University (DAU) training and it does not describe every activity necessary to be effective.