Thursday, February 12, 2009

Great Demo! – For Development?

No, not necessarily for teaching developers how to demo to others in their organization and to customers (although that is a good idea…!), but rather more interestingly, I’ve had several reports from Great Demo! Workshop customers of how Development teams use Great Demo! tools and methods to help direct the creation of capabilities and features.

Specifically, they report that they are now working backwards from customer-facing demos (or expected demos) to implement or improve capabilities. For example:

- Development groups are using Situation Slides to ensure that they understand customer situations, prior to coding features. Situation Slides are then often broadened into more detailed Use Cases.

- Understanding that the Do It pathway (the fewest number of steps required to complete a task) is typically the desired pathway from the customer’s perspective – has lead to removing extraneous steps and reducing the complexity of tasks and workflows.

- The need to be able to clearly communicate the key take-away deliverables – Illustrations – has resulted in improvements in formatting, default settings, and layout of key screens and reports.

You gotta love it when sales and development are in alignment!

1 comment:

John Kreisa said...

Hi Peter,

Great examples. I also do think it is relevant for developers to know the methodology for presenting to customers and prospects when they get involved in that kind of activity. Particularly in larger public facing situations like user conferences where clear communication of features (new or existing) is important.

Great blog, keep it up!