Dealing with software disasters can cause frustration, fear, and panic, and sometimes surprising elegance.
“Programming today is a race between software engineers striving to build bigger and better idiot-proof programs, and the Universe trying to produce bigger and better idiots. So far, the Universe is winning.”
– Rick Cook
A vendor team was presenting a face-to-face demo at a prospect’s site and the meeting was nearly complete. The vendor team included the salesperson, a senior technical person, and a presales practitioner.
The presales player completed the demo, leaving the most exciting screen on the display.
The senior technical person began a Q & A session and was handling answers verbally. A question was raised, which normally could be answered beautifully with a visual example using the software.
The senior technical person turned to the presales person and asked them to show that capability.
The presales player responded, “The system is slow right now… Why don’t we wait until afterwards?”
The senior technical person persisted, saying, “Oh come on, let’s go ahead and show that capability.”
The presales person said, with some strong emphasis, “The system is really slow right now…”
The senior technical person suddenly understood: The laptop had crashed at the final screen! The presales player was cool, calm, and confident, and had simply moved smoothly into the summary.
The audience had no clue that there had been a crash or any problem!
Moral: Now that’s a Great Demo!
If you are enjoying this series of posts, grab a copy of “Suspending Disbelief” – it delivers 35 more bitesize, fun, engaging stories: https://tinyurl.com/yc7rsrmy
For more practices on dealing bugs, crashes, and other demo disasters see page 390 in Great Demo!: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0C9SNKC2Y/
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