Demo Chunking – Suggestions to Get Started

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At a recent Great Demo! Workshop, participants asked for suggestions on how to begin to break up their long traditional demos into shorter, more consumable chunks – great question!  Here are a few suggestions to get started:

• Set-up Mode Items:  These are excellent candidates for separate, stand-alone chunks.  Building templates, dashboards and forms (particularly from scratch) are all activities done once, most typically, and then consumed many times in daily use.  Building these are generally of most interest to system administrators and super-users.

• End-user Workflows:  Each separate workflow is a good chunk, typically.  The target audience is generally individual contributors (staffers).  Remember to start each chunk with an Illustration of the end result…!

• Dashboards:  Presenting dashboards (relevant for the specific job title) is an excellent starting chunk for a Great Demo!  Bear in mind that users operating in daily-use mode are typically not interested in how to generate these from scratch (that’s set-up mode).  They may be interested in simple modifications or changes – and/or brief workflows on drilling-down and exploring the data.  Dashboards are often of most interest to high-ranking players and middle managers.  Dashboards may also display how the business is going and enable opportunities, challenges and exceptions to be identified and explored.

• Reporting:  Another excellent chunk to start a Great Demo!  Reporting by nature tends to be static, but high value – reports also show business problems, opportunities, and exceptions.  Reports tend to be of most interest to executives and managers.

• Alerts:  Showing the very simple (but oh-so-important) short workflows associated with alerts are wonderful chunks.  They make truly excellent “Do It” pathways, and map delightfully to daily-use mode when presented starting with an unopened email alert message.  Alerts can be consumed by a broad range of users and job titles.

• “If” and “Or” Pathways:  Anything other than the “Fewest Number of Clicks” in a workflow represents another series of separate chunks.  These are good segments for “Peel Back the Layers” sections – and are often driven by questions from the audience.  Individual contributors/staffers are generally the job title level that drive these segments, along with middle managers to a lesser degree.

Any others to add?