How to demo your project deliverables

From the The Money Files Blog
by Elizabeth Harrin

A blog that looks at all aspects of project and program finances from budgets, estimating and accounting to getting a pay rise and managing contracts. Written by Elizabeth Harrin from RebelsGuideToPM.com.

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Categories: tips

Demos and prototypes save your project time and money because you can get early feedback. I’ve talked about that before (in this video) but a couple of people have asked me for some more tips around setting up demos. And I’m very happy to oblige.

Let’s get on with it then, shall we?

The demo environment

Pick a nice room. By that I mean one that is large enough to fit everyone in comfortably and that’s got enough power sockets. Everyone brings a device along these days and they all need plugging in.

Understand the room’s heating and lighting controls. You don’t want people getting fidgety because they forgot their jacket – you want them concentrating on your amazing project deliverable.

If you are doing your demo via a web conference, get the software set up well before you expect everyone else to join the call. Test your microphone and headset and make sure you can share control of the screen with your co-presenters, if you have any.

Set expectations

Manage the expectations of the people in the room. Are you showing them a very rough outline of a product, a prototype that doesn’t quite work properly yet, a feature-rich almost-finished product, or the final thing? Set their expectations around what they are going to see so they aren’t disappointed when features don’t work or when you tell them it’s too late to change the colour because you’ve already ordered 30,000 in blue.

Review your objectives

What is it that you want people to get out of this demo? You can organise a demo or show people a prototype for a number of reasons such as:

To get buy in for your proposal
To ensure you are on the right track
To get feedback
To confirm your understanding of requirements
To keep your stakeholders engaged on the project
To show someone a finished product prior to delivering testing on how to use it.

Think carefully about why you want to do this demo and what outputs you are expecting. Do your demo attendees have the same understanding as you? It’s worth running through the objectives at the start of the meeting, just in case they don’t.

Get organised

Practice, practice, practice. A complete dry run is a good idea. You want your audience to notice what you are saying, not get cut off halfway through your web conference because you don’t know how to use the meeting controls.

Walk through the demo in preparation, whether you are doing it in front of a ‘live’ audience or via a computer screen.

Prepare for questions

Be ready to answer questions. You are showing them your project deliverable in anticipation of some kind of feedback so expect them to have questions about what it does, how it does that and what else it could do. Be prepared to manage the ‘wouldn’t it be great if…’ type questions if you aren’t able to consider any modifications at this point.

Provide back up materials

Your demo attendees will hopefully be so excited about what you have built that they will want to share it with their teams. Have some materials ready so that they can do that: screenshots or handouts are great, but a test login (if software) or samples (if something else) and details of how to use it are better.

This gives them the chance to play with what you have created and if you want further feedback, let them know that you are open to their ideas and provide details of how to get them to you – direct contact, via an online request form or so on.

Demos and prototypes are a really powerful tool, especially if you are delivering a software product or a tangible item. End users particularly find this sort of workshop or meeting a very valuable session as they can see what they are getting. In my experience, showing someone a demo of your product helps build engagement too, as they start to get excited and they can see the idea become real.

However, make sure that if you are doing a demo that you are in a position to comment about when they are likely to get to access the final deliverable. There’s nothing worse than seeing a demo and getting excited about the project only to be told, or you can’t have it for 18 months. Set expectations carefully!