Demo Often

I find that nothing sharpens the mind and your sense of urgency better than preparing to demo your work to others. Feeling the heat of wanting to make a good impression on your audience really leads you to button up your presentation and think through the details.

When you are in an intense development period, you need to keep a super- tight process.  And a key ingredient in keeping things tight is to demo your working software often.  Getting the honest feedback that a demo invites is also a critical part of a tight process.  I encourage everyone to demo their stuff as frequently as is feasible to whatever audience you can muster. My favorite project status update -- by far -- is getting a demo of working software, even if it is just a small piece of what will be a much larger whole before it is released to customers. Even just seeing that bare heart of your project beating away is magical.