Have you already done a presentation on software development? Sometimes, do you feel that attendees don’t understand what you promote? Or they don’t ask any questions and just wait for the next presentation? Most of us have known this kind of awkward situation. We want to share our ideas, our thoughts but nobody seems interested.
Boring presentation - Credits: Corbis
When you’re the talker, there are many possibilities why people don’t like your presentation:
- you repeat the same thing every time
- your topic is not relevant to their interest
- people don’t understand your ideas
These three points are extremely linked together: it’s your fault! Why don’t you:
- present the topic using an original approach
- consider your public in order to help them to solve their own problems
- make your ideas easier to understand (it doesn’t mean simplistic)
Create better presentations
If you have already read my blog, you know that I’m used to read books when I go into a topic. This time, I’ve chosen a best seller(I often choose my books by reading the reviews on Amazon): Presentation zen.
Presentation Zen: Simple ideas on presentation design and delivery
It’s from Garr Reynolds who is, according to Wikipedia:
Garr Reynolds is an American writer and designer. He is particularly known for his book Presentation Zen: Simple Ideas on Presentation Design and Delivery, and for two presentations, Brain Rules for Presenters and Career Advice ‘08. Reynolds is also a professor at the Kansai Gaidai University, and the former Manager of Worldwide User Group Relations at Apple Inc.
The book is well designed and well explained. It’s a pleasure to read it! Considering the quality of the paper, it’s really cheap! There are many samples which illustrate each idea. The “tool” Powerpoint is criticized: in fact, it gives bad habits to people. When you have to prepare a presentation, the first thing to do is not to launch Powerpoint! If you do this, it will clearly break your creativity and so, your presentation will probably be boring.
So how to do? There are four main sequential steps:
- Brainstorming: Don’t use a computer! Write everything you have in mind on the topic you will talk about. It doesn’t require to be ordered ideas… Write everything!
- Grouping and identifying the core: Group similar ideas and identify the unified message, it is what you want your public remembers after the presentation
- Storyboard off the computer: To be efficient, you have to tell a story: a good way is to print out blank slides, 12 slides per sheet. Then, draw inside the slides (one message per slide).
- Storyboarding in Slide Sorter view: Make a first draft of your slides on Powerpoint. Use the Slide sorter view to see whether it is fluent.
This process will help you to create a presentation which captivates your attendees. The book describes clearly the basic knowledge that everybody has to know about design.
But, when you have the storyboard of your presentation, each slide has to be cautiously built. Don’t write too much text, only few words. Use an image that your attendees can memorize because, it will be easier for them to remember this slide if there is an image. Use the contrast when you show a chart (example below), etc… You will learn that building a presentation is an interesting work.
Example of using efficiently the constrast (credits: presentation Zen)
I can’t give too much samples if I don’t want to be accused of “plaggia”, but I really recommend everybody to read this book. You will see how bad your presentations were and, particularly, how to improve them.
Metaphor are keys in software development
If you have read Code complete from Steve McConnell, you know that metaphors are really important to understand software building. In the section 2.1, we can read:
Important developments often arise out of analogies. By comparing a topic you understand poorly to something similar you understand better, you can come up with insights that result in a better understanding of the less-familiar topic. This use of metaphor is called “modeling.”
[...]
Software development is a younger field than most other sciences. It’s not yet mature enough to have a set of standard metaphors. Consequently, it has a profusion of complementary and conflicting metaphors. Some are better than others. Some are worse. How well you understand the metaphors determines how well you understand software development.
Steve McConnell uses metaphors to describe most of the concepts of his books and yes, it gives us the feeling that he’s a specialist of software (I’m convinced he is).
A good presentation on software development
So, how to present software development? Whatever the topic is, you have to tell a story which can be understood by all your attendees. Avoid judgments when someone doesn’t understand what you mean, your explanation can be the problem. Use metaphors in order to make your software development ideas/problems understandable by everyone.
Personally, I’ve recently tested this technique and people really liked it. And you, what is your tips to prepare a good presentation on software development?
Post a Comment