Return to Archive Runtime - The Software Outsourcing Newsletter for Executives and Investors from Accelerance and Steve Mezak Are Your Programmers From Missouri? They call Missouri the "Show Me" state. Sometimes it feels like all customers must be from there. They need to be shown the benefits of your software before they will buy. Communicating the benefits of your software can be a challenge, especially when you haven't written a line of code yet. In his book Jumpstart Your Business Brain, the author Brian Hall says there are three key ingredients or "laws" to successfully market a product: An Overt Benefit — specifically, obviously, directly, what's in it for the customer? A Real Reason to Believe — why should the customer believe you will deliver the promise made above? A Dramatic Difference — How revolutionary and new-to-the-world is your overt-benefit/reason-to-believe pair? Sometimes it feels like your programmers are from Missouri too. They have to be shown in detail what the software is supposed to do so they can write it. Customers may be convinced by a fancy brochure and a good salesperson. Programmers need something more. If you have an existing product and happy customers, you can get powerful testimonials to convince new prospects. If you are just starting out and creating a new product, then you have more of a challenge. You have two choices:(1) Spend time and money to develop your product and then show prospects and investors, or (2) Create convincing marketing materials that paint a picture and tell a story of how your product will work. Option #1 is risky. You can waste a lot of time and money developing a software product that customers won't buy. The most effective approach for #2 is a compelling demo that shows how your product will be used. But how can you demo your software if it isn't written yet? The approach I recommend is a "static" HTML demo. Use your favorite HTML editor to create the demo files. I like Macromedia Dreamweaver. Adobe PageMill or Microsoft FrontPage work the same way. You create a sequence of HTML pages that illustrate how your software will be used to deliver your overt benefits. Even if your software's user interface will be implemented in Windows Forms or Java Swing for example, creating the demo in HTML is easy. When you are ready, the HTML pages are used as a guide to create the user interface in your target technology. For example, here is a link to the demo login page for an on-line order processing web application. No matter what you enter in the username or password fields, clicking on the Login button will display a page as if you logged in as Mary Byer. We pretend to login as Mary and play the role of buyer in the demo. Acting as Mary, we can check order status, view existing order details and create new orders. There is no software running here except the web server and your browser. (And the web server is optional - you can run the demo using the HTML files on your laptop and just a browser.) From this initial page of the demo, you can only log in as Mary Byer. The same old orders are found and created each time the demo is shown. Your demo will be more memorable if you use interesting or funny names for the user roles and tell a story. Mary Byer plays the role of a buyer and places orders using the software. Another login page is for a sales guy named Peter Sellers that receives orders with the software. There is a story to tell for both of these users and the proper sequence of clicks through these web pages tells that story. I could write down the specific sequence of clicks as a script to tell the story, but I think you get the idea. These pages are not that pretty and this was not the final look and feel chosen for the software. Today, there are commercial templates you can use as a starting point. These templates cost less than $100 and give your demos a professional look. Now what does this have to do with outsourcing? A demo like this is a very useful way to specify your product for outsourced development successfully. You can use the demo and script to explain what the software should do. Your HTML demo is an effective way of illustrating the major use cases of your software. Use cases by themselves are a textual description of the sequence of steps (and exceptions) that users carry out. The demo is a good visual representation and takes just a few weeks of time to complete. Software companies are concerned that a huge specification is required to successfully outsource their software development. It seems like a waste of time to create such a large document that will be read by so few and outdated so quickly. Creating your specification is an easy exercise using screen shots HTML demo. You can use screen shots in the specification and elaborate with words to describe the use and meaning of each of the screen elements. Here is a link to an example specification, contained in a PDF file, for the account administration features of the ordering system. As I pointed out, you are not writing software to create this kind of demo. You can quickly edit the pages to make changes as you get feedback from prospects. You also get new ideas for features and functions of the software as you create the demo and your software begins taking shape. Customers want to see if your software solves their problem. A good demo shows them you understand their daily pains. Customers are more concerned that you understand their problem than if you can write software code. If you are in the software business, they assume you can develop your software properly. A static HTML demo enables rapid outsourcing of your software development. Use it to confirm with customers that the software will solve their problem. And use it to show the outsourced development team what the software should do. Vision Resources Are you wondering how you will select an expert offshore team to develop your software? Use the Accelerance Vision Resources(sm) outsourced vendor selection service and cut the time of your vendor selection process by as much as 90%. Vision Resources leverages members of the Accelerance's 17 teams in 14 countries around the world. Click here to learn more about Vision Resources Accelerance, Inc. delivers impartial & expert strategies and services for risk-free outsourcing of your software development. Visit our web site at www.Accelerance.com   Until next time, Steve Mezak Accelerance, Inc. Risk-Free Outsourcing www.Accelerance.com 213 Garcia Avenue Half Moon Bay, CA 94019 1-650-712-8990 Contact me by email (c) 2005 Accelerance, Inc. All rights reserved. You are free to use material from the "Runtime" eZine in whole or in part, as long as you include complete attribution, including live web site link. Please also notify me where the material will appear. The attribution should read: "By Steve Mezak, CEO of Accelerance, Inc. Please visit the Accelerance web site at http://www.Accelerance.com for more information and resources on outsourcing and creating great software products."