A small, talented team with decent synergy can produce remarkable results. The last thing the breakthrough team should worry about is system permissions, standards or otherwise conforming to a production or even pseudo-production environment. If possible, the bank should obtain hardware that is completely at the team's disposal. If this type of control is not possible, those individuals who do have jurisdiction should be an integral part of the team. If this presents a problem, the red flag has just been raised because the success of the overall project is now in jeopardy.
Prototypes can reveal a great deal about the political struggles that lie ahead.
The bank should focus on those data elements that best represent the overall spirit of its project. For example, one would expect the prototype for a warehouse that is supposed to improve customer relationship management to focus on the customer dimension. By carefully pruning the targeted dimensions and attributes, the organisation will save valuable time in the design and loading of your prototype. In addition, if a bank uses actual source records, it is likely to run a better prototype than using fictional data. These and many other questions should be considered in order to maximize the usefulness of the prototyping effort.