Many proposed contingencies regarding the conditions when the use of prototyping will lead to successful system development appear in the literature. Using an industry survey, this exploratory study empirically investigates the effect of certain contingencies on system success. Overall, results indicate that five variables, when combined with prototyping, affect system success (as indicated by user satisfaction): innovativeness of the project, impact of the system on the organization, user participation, number of users, and developer experience with prototyping. These results provide some insight into the proper uses of prototyping to improve system success. The results also indicate that several of the current contingencies, if followed, do not ensure high levels of system success.