Giving A Demo

The first step to public speaking

2024

Speaking Tiers

Sprint/Product Demo
Book Club
SkillUp / Internal Training
Community Meetup / Local Convention
Running Connections / About Me

Speaking is an essential soft skill for developers

Agile Cycle

This is more of the agency side of things where teams work off fuzzy requirements and need frequent feedback

What is the purpose of the Demo

Show off the work done during sprint
Share new functionality with stakeholders
Show basic functionality to someone unfamiliar with the application

- They are to show off the successful work accomplished during the last x period of time
Show visible progress to stakeholders

Prep Time!

What do you need to do be properly prepared?

Prepping is important. A poor demo in front an important group makes the whole team look bad.

Prep Level

Upper Management / Clients
Full Team / Book Club
Squad / Traditional Sprint Demo
Sub-squad / Peers / Demo Dry Run

Do your best based on your audience. A poor demo can look bad for the whole team

Rotate your sprint demoers!

It's good practice. It's good exposure when clients/stakeholders are on the call

Determine what you are going to demo

Something visual, Web UI is great, but DB diagrams are fine too.
NO SMOKE AND MIRRORS!

Make a Script!

Stick to your script

plan click by click
Can be as simple a postet not

Designate a Note Taker

Don't pause during your demo to write stuff down

Find something you are going to do better than last time.

Say 'Um' fewer times
Give praise more
Stay on script

Walk through your demo a couple of times

Demo Time

Breathe and Calm Your Nerves

Know that your audience is already sympothetic towards you.
They know you are in a stressful situation
Mind you caffiene in take

Slow Down

Let users see the flow of your mouse movements and actions
for FE use JS to pre populate large form fields, but let users know

Don't demo off local

Demo somewhere that your audience could potentially use what you just went through.
Best place: Prod if it deosn't impact business
BE demos can be challenging. Swagger is acceptable givin the audience.

Make sure your audience can see what you are doing

Set your screen resolution to something small enough for them to see.
Zoom in on 4K monitors

Be Presentable

Have your camera on, remember part of this is to get your face and voice to a broader audience
Face the camera if possible so it looks like you are talking to the audience.
Invest in your mic or camera setup if appropriate.

Use tools to enhance your demo

ZoomIt
CarnacKeys
AutoHotkey

Be Mindful of Interruptions

Questions will come up that may throw you off your cadence.
Do your best to curb long conversations. It's a demo, not a feedback session... unless it's a feedback session
Commit to absolutely nothing. Say 'We can add it to the backlog and we can look into it in the future'
"That's beyond the scope of this meeting, let's revisit that later."
Accept all feedback, but commit to nothing."
We are aware of the situation and we have a taskforce working on it.

Slow Down Again

Let users see the flow of your mouse movements and actions
for FE use JS to pre populate large form fields, but let users know

Celebrate the wins and your team

You are not just celebrating completed work, but the people who contributed to it
Acknoledge the BE Devs that provide endpoints
Acknowledge POs for answering questions

Recognize the challenges (if appropriate)

Never throw another teammate or team under the bus.
expressing frustration is for a Retro

Fall back plan

What happens if you loose internet, have an outage, or get hit by a bus?

Have a backup presenter
Record at a later date and send a link

After the Demo

Follow up with your note taker

Get appropriate requests or bugs into the

Retro the demo

Find something to work on
Designate the next demo-er on rotation

Next Steps as a speaker?

Offer to demo your product to a broader audience.
Toastmasters?

Giving A Demo The first step to public speaking 2024