I'm sure there are some things that are difficult to prototype, but typically you can special case the difficult parts. Regardless, if the prototype is difficul

I'm sure there are some things that are difficult to prototype, but typically you can special case the difficult parts. Regardless, if the prototype is difficult the product will be even harder. I think there are basically accepted practices. If the software has a UI, use MVC and separate all the UI bits. Test coverage gives a good metric for product quality and everything but the UI should be well covered. Reasonable performance tests should cover multiple users, load etc. I'm not sure what civil engineer considers robust, but I think this approach basically works.