At the final demo, you will be expected to deliver the finished software product to your customer and myself. The most convenient vehicle for this delivery is a burned CD. Additionally, customer satisfaction will be a factor in this grade.
For the final demo presentation, a list of key things I’ll be looking for:
- Professionalism – Professional manner of speech, professional look
- Pick your best presenters
- Not everyone has to talk – this is something that can be decided by your group
- Best to have multiple people there, however – perhaps a driver and a speaker at the very least
- Rehearse!
- This doesn’t mean you have to be stiff as a board, either
- Know your audience
- I joke around a lot, so if you have a customer similar to me you may be able to incorporate that into your presentation
- Customer may not be the same way – you should have a good feel for this by now
- Pick your best presenters
- Preparedness – Knowing your material, presenting well
- Having an outline can help here – want the presentation to flow smoothly
- Prepare test data to use for the demo
- Thoroughness – Cover the software as thoroughly as you can
- Cover all of the major functionality, demonstrate relevant pieces
- Customer or myself may ask you to demonstrate things in different ways
- If there’s a serious problem that can’t be avoided, call attention to it
- This really shouldn’t be the case at this point, however
- This is supposed to be the software delivery, a showstopping bug would be catastrophic in the real world
- However, demos can have dual purposes, and one of them (in this instance) is selling the product
- You want to push for how awesome your product is, so don’t necessarily focus on every little bug you have if you don’t have to
- Don’t get caught with your pants down, though
- This really shouldn’t be the case at this point, however
- Cover all of the major functionality, demonstrate relevant pieces
- Knowledgeability – Knowing the problem well, knowing your program
- Be prepared to answer questions from either myself or the customer
- If you don’t know, better to fail gracefully (I’ll have to do some research into that) than to guess haphazardly
- Flexibility – If problems arise, handle them gracefully
- Be prepared for the customer wanting you to present off sequence (in a way you hadn’t necessarily rehearsed for)
- Won’t necessarily happen, but it could
- Having an error or problem won’t necessarily be the end of the world, or even take points off of your demo grade, but roll with it and attempt to address the issue quickly
- Being able to handle any issues gracefully
- May be worth bringing one laptop for presentations and another to fix errors if necessary – this way the presentation can be resumed and problems can be addressed with a minor interruption
- Be prepared for the customer wanting you to present off sequence (in a way you hadn’t necessarily rehearsed for)
I’m not going to break this down into percentages, but rather evaluate the entire thing as a whole – a good presentation is organic and doesn’t necessarily follow an exact flow or format, and I want to emphasize that.