as a developer demos can be a powerful way to validate your work get management to make a decision or even build your brand in this episode we've got not one but two experts to share ideas on how you can make powerful demos welcome to breakpoint the service now developer [Music] podcast hello service now admins Builders developers and of course all of the curious individuals that I always say with the utmost love and respect welcome to or welcome back to breakpoint the service now developer podcast where we bring you the latest tools tips and tradecraft to accelerate your career and today's episode clearly falls into the tradecraft sector my name is Chuck tamasi senior developer Advocate and I am joined by the smart the Beautiful the Posh programmer service now developer Advocate oh senior service now developer Advocate pardon me we wouldn't want to do that whole chairman and CEO thing again Lauren McManaman how are you today Lauren you know what I am fantastic despite the demotion so we were doing that to Mark Opie last week in Washington he was all over with titles you senior director are you director senior V VP it's hard to keep them all straight when they all sound the same from an individual contributor standpoint they do well Lauren I am pleased because in this episode we have the pleasure of talking to two people we have the manager of outbound pm demo engineer which is an appropriate title because we're talking about demos today Anusha garamella how are you today anusa hi Jack I am great thanks for having me on the show oh it's our pleasure our pleasure we also have senior outbound product manager Amit Kamar how's your day started or actually you're closer to the end of the day how are you today Amit no it's been wonderful chck and uh I've been great thank you so much for having me on the podcast as well we are working opposite ends of the time zones here Lauren and I are up at well the sun will be up soon for us and it's probably setting about this time for you in India but really appreciate you giving us your time before we begin let's do a little get to know each other we'll start with you anusa what what's your story ah uh let me start by um what I used to do versus what I do uh in in the demo team right now so like uh uh a computer science cred who who used to write lines of code so I was uh I started as a developer at Microsoft uh you you and Lauren might you know understand the passion behind writing the lines of code and then trying get the best of the solution and then making sure that everything works behind the scenes so started as a deop and then I moved as an architect where I got to look at the prer perspectives and then I moved into product management by accident so one of yeah how do you move into a position by accident let me tell you that so uh as one of the product managers on the team who was supposed to do a big demo in my previous org was off that day and then it was an impromptu chance that I got and and when my manager said hey Anusha since you've developed the feature you know that in and out would you like to go ahead and show the demo I was like of course I'll do that and then when I presented that demo I understood that I love as much as coding I also love presenting and also looking at the vision the road map and what the product is actually doing so I started taking site projects working with different mentors in product management with that experience which I call by accident because that happened to me if that person were not out of office or if they were presenting that day I wouldn't have been here in the product management realm so I took that as an accidental opportunity and developed and and since then I developed great passion for product management and now especially in service now I am fortunate to work with a a team of Rockstar PMS who specialize in building demos and I'm proud to be leading the customer and Industry work workflows portfolio and and I say that we are the best team for CWF in service now you sound like the right person for The Accidental job yeah Lauren I think we uh write anisha's name on a slip of paper and put it in that folder for potential future presenters absolutely now when you're not at work what do you do for fun Anisha oh I love spending time with my friends and family especially on long drives I love cars and I love driving also so no matter how tired I am jetlagged I am going on a long drive with music energizes me with a cup of coffee and snacks open the sunroof just enjoy some nice breeze and weather and I'm recharged for the rest of my day that sounds idolic yeah especially mountains especially when I'm on vacations that's the best thing I want to experience wonderful thank you and Amit what is your backstory how did you get to service now yeah so I'm based out of New Delhi just to start off Jack I've been a functional consultant all my life uh initially was working on Oracle products then was somehow introduced to the service now ecosystem and was having in the ecosystem for like eight years so I understand how powerful the product is I did segue into a fintech domain just to get into the product management role I mean it didn't happen accidentally to me like Anusha I had to make an effort to get into this and once done I'm here and I actually look at the healthcare and Manufacturing industry and I create those wonderful demos that you see for those for those two industries and I've been with service now for over a year and it's been wonderful since I'm here well thank you very much and your passion when you're not at work is it's playing sport um I believe I can play all the sports with equal ease a lot of people may not agree but uh that's what I believe and the second item is that I spend a lot of time on planning travels because eventually if you plan 10 travels you'll end up going on 5 so planning takes a lot of time than actually traveling and and I find that uh that that more fulfilling because I can plan that I'm going to antactica or wherever even though I don't go but yeah I mean that that gives me that feeling so I do that a lot I feel you so much on that planning aspect especially if you're try to plan it with other friends and family that is a that is a very big challenge that's usually the the reason that they fall through eventually so I feel you there exponentially yeah I'm putting a M's name on my list of people that can do my travel planning for me there you go absolutely he loves it give it to him yeah who needs a travel planner when you have AIT and any sport Adit I'm I'm gonna challenge that uh how are you at ice hockey I mean I come from the north and but it doesn't snow so maybe I'll pass on that but yeah I mean you can talk about other sports and I'll be good you raised the flag I had to go for I know well another question we love to ask our guests and friends is tell them tell us a story about a time that you thought uh you did something that you might get fired for uh perhaps it's I don't know maybe sleeping through an alarm like uh someone maybe speaking on this call did today or you know maybe it's something Innocent but usually it's always get a good chuckle so you know do you have any one of those stories no absolutely U and uh for me it was right just at the start of my career so as they usually are as they usually are so I was working for a client visit where one of the big client was visiting our campus and I was working on the creative part of it wherein we had to create the standies the brochures and a lot of collateral which was supposed to be part of the visit I was supposed to send it out to a vendor but the Outlook limit that we had in our office was that you can't send anything beyond 20 MB at one go so one of my friends suggested why don't you open your Gmail and send it out I mean anyways it has to go out to an external vendor so it doesn't matter whether it goes from our Like official ID or like the personal ID sure so I went ahead I sent it out and the next morning when I came in there were like three major security incidents uh which were raised escalated to my manager and his manager and I was like I'll probably be fired uh today but somehow they understood what the intention was I mean what the situation was it didn't seem like too big but when you are at the start of your career I mean even small things like look very big and I learned that no matter how much time it takes just follow the policies I mean the process are in are there for a reason so we better ader to that rather than looking for shortcuts wait until you've been there 25 years before you start bending the rules absolutely I NOA how about your story can you top that one yeah of course uh so again uh in the beginning of my um it career like everyone or almost everyone uh while I was working on a project with one of the Platinum customers the word platinum itself means how important you can imagine how important the customer is so we were doing a large scale it was a uh it's called in private preview so they signed up for a private preview for a feature and they were doing all the arrangements to make sure that their application would function as smooth as it should so one of the steps was to size the VMS to to launch all the infra using Azure arm templates so in that one of the obvious parameters is the number of the size of the virtual machine then depending on that you get the number of computer sources the memory and Y so inadvertently I changed the size of the virtual machines to a small sized while the application is huge imagine the application was doing more than 1 million transactions and could a virtual machine sized s handle it oh my God that's a total no so uh this was even you know without my notice uh I I didn't do it by purpose that was something that she got changed in the script so and then the launch was smooth everything was good everyone everyone was congratulating each other and then my mentor came up to me and said hey Anusha can I have a word with you so of course let's let's speak about this I thought it would be another appreciation of what I've done but he said that you know this is something that has changed and he said I didn't want you to you know change something at the last instead he did it himself and said everything is smooth but I want to emphasize the fact that you have a support system to help you in this scenario but make sure that you do all these checks beforehand and have everything ready before the final release or the coif scenario so I would have obviously gotten fired if the applications were not starting that day but the my mentor saved me so the lesson learned here is have people who can support you in different scenarios at your best at your worst and even when you make the mistake he didn't pinpoint hence the mistake was more like a lesson which I still remember I would have taken it otherwise if it was not put that way considering my experience the maturity in the industry and also the work that I've done so he rewarded me at the same time corrected me so that was my short story I love that I love that what what were your thoughts when you were watching this you go I can't believe it's running that well on a small instance look how much money I saved them they're really efficient yeah when your manager says can I have a word with you you're thinking I saved the money yeah that's a great tip rely on your your your support system around you that's why we work on teams let's jump into our main topic great introductions by the way let's let's jump into our main topic why should a developer or any other technical person really care about doing a demo so a demo is a form of communication so I will say that it is a way of putting your ideas into action so imagine you write hundreds thousands and thousands of lines of code but how it looks on the front or on the screen is the way how people absorb it and it gets ingrained in their mind so demo is a way of communication that's one second is through a demo you're creating some memorable experiences imagine if you have to put all the hard work and in into action such that it remembered people remembered that for a long time so using your demos you're creating experiences and not just showing them screens and third is it's a way of Engagement you talk through a demo you identify what are the pain points what are the feedback what are the knowns what are the unknowns the needs requirements and a lot more conversation happens through a demo and while you navigate it so these are the top three things that are uh at the top of my mind Amit what do you have to top up here yeah I mean pretty similar but just to add I mean demos are crucial for everybody I mean be it a developer sales guy or anybody I mean whatever work has been done needs to be presented well I think that's the core of it and by presenting that work we gain confidence I mean it helps improve communication skills allows us to build rap with the stakeholders which in a way leads to better collaborations in future and and just to add I mean when they say that Excellence is achieved not only through doing good work but also by effectively presenting it to the world so the presentation layer is as important as the technical layer which is on the background that kind of gets to an old adage that I've heard it doesn't matter if you're the smartest person in the room if nobody knows it so the demo is a way of showing what you know and how it solves the problem and the solution you've come up with etc etc so I love that also what is your point of view on the audience aspect so you can sometimes put together like a perfectly scripted perfectly rehearsed show but you also have to make sure you're targeting it for the right people so what do you what do you think about when prepping for a specific type of audience so let me give you a broader context and then Amit you can go into some specifics and shared some examples of what we do in deoa best best as a best practice so especially with audience again like you said Lauren no matter how prepared you are somebody throws a curveball in there and you have to pay it from a certain scenario or a script that we've prepared so over the past U as you do demos and prepare your demos you categorize this into different buckets potential customers internal audience external audience or even you train the trainers right group group meetings where you train the um uh people who are delivering the demo itself so preparation is the key plus also understanding what a use case is for the demo that you're showing what is the endtoend scenario highlights and benefits so these are some of the key aspects to consider and then you can go further deep into what that what is the job role or the the person who's actually building the demo plus the person who's viewing the demo so there are two aspects of it the first aspect is I let Amit talk about for example if you're building a a solution consultant is building a demo and he's showing it to a potential customer versus the solution consultant is building a demo to an internal audience both are different in terms of prep and delivery as well so Amit you want to share your thoughts there yeah I mean just to add on the service now context to it so the demos that we build as part of our team are actually consumed by solution Consultants predominantly and there are two types of se's one are like the core 's who look at a specific industry they have technical expertise of a specific area and then they are or in fact sorry it's the opposite side we'll just cut this out so yeah uh so uh the audience for our demos are predominantly the solution Consultants uh so the demos that we prepare are actually run by two types of sc's one are the core sc's and one are the specialist sc's specialist sc's look at a specific area where the area that they specialize in and the core 's are more looking on the in generic terms in terms of looking at there could be like different level of expertise that these guys have now the demo should be such that they're able to cater to different audience I mean the uh the maturity level of the customer could be different as well I mean they could be right at the starting point of the curve or they could be pretty mature so the demo has to be such that it caters to all the audience allowing them to uh to I mean be internal external knowledge skill set it should cater to all the variations which are available in the in the outside world so as a developer I'm proud of my work as most of our developers are you want to show off all the bells and whistles and that may not be the right approach I've honestly seen a demo go on where the person was clicking through every dialogue box and showing every property and every feature we never built anything there was never any flow to this it was it was more like reading a manual in visual form and I that was that was what I would call an extreme case because it went on for two and a half days oh my gosh that's why I wanted to bring this one up know your audience is very important and have an objective to this I know what that is so I'm I'm I'm generalizing here but what makes a good demo versus a bad demo and then we can dive into how we make that happen yeah so uh I think I'll put um the same answer in a different approach that it C us to a good demo as well as a bad demo so one is Discovery without discovering what the demo should be like you said Chuck it it cannot be a good demo at all so even before you do the demo identifying what is what is the uh end user expecting to see is the first step that is the first step and and one of the aspects of a good demo second one is nobody likes to see a lengthy PPT followed by a Click by click of thousand screens on the software and like said show all the work that we've done so far and lots of technical jargon and terms like mentioning flow designer script includes mentioning some of the functions that we use nobody wants to know how Tech technical we are especially in the demo so again it depends on the type of audience if you're speaking to a code developer they expect those terms otherwise right they not have the trust in you if you're speaking to an exec who wants to purchase your software he absolutely does not want to know any of that it's just numbers 25% of time saved 25% of cost saved 10% increase in uh uh employee productivity so that is what is the second step is understanding the audience second is usage of language and terms in accordance to who's actually attending your demo and the third aspect is don't assume don't assume anything ask questions maintain a certain level of Engagement and pivot if needed right though you have PR for a certain script make a U-turn if somebody asks something different have a backup plan ready what if the instance is down if the demo guards are not with you expect demo Gods what do we have to sacrifice to these demo Gods I want to know yeah so uh you have to like you said it depends on the scenario sometimes in India we have this tradition where we break coconuts and then say hey demog Gods please be with us and make sure that everything is working well or maybe you know something similar that makes your instance up and running and working on full speed jokesart always have a plan B ready like a figma click through or a walk through or a repri demo which is just like a working software which helps you move across in your conversation so I think that extra level of preparation and answering and having those most obvious questions answered by yourself being the shoes of someone whom you're delivering the demo to and be prepared with some of the most obvious questions so that's be prepared that's that that was I was waiting for that there it is be prepared as much as you can Scar the lion likes to sing about in Lion King be [Laughter] prepared speaking of preparation I think it's interesting because both of you have brought up a lot of points to consider for Preparation you've brought up okay we're talking about the audience we're talking about disc having done Discovery so do you have kind of like a prescriptive plan or tips that people could follow for Preparation just to make sure they don't miss anything yes uh so that probably we can put uh put in as let's say four W's and one HED uh that everybody should consider before they start preparing for the demo first one is who I mean we already covered some part of it in the previous answers I mean depending on the audience who the audience is but we should also consider what the number of people is I mean if we are presenting it to like a very big audience maybe the interaction could be limited but if we are in a smaller group I think we can still have that Q&A and maybe understand what they are trying to get out of this demo so that that's pretty important no no Q Anda at the Creator con demos Lauren that's what I heard Amen to that uh the second one is when wherein um we need to understand when the demo is uh right I mean so that helps us uh understand how much time do we have to prepare is it like a very quick demo that we have to deliver tomorrow so we may not go as deep if we have enough time maybe we can we can make sure that it's everything is perfect and as expected another way could be that how much time do we have to deliver so our session could be only 15 minutes our session could be 1 hour and accordingly we need to curate our demo another way could be just handling or leaving time for q& days depending on the audience so yeah I that is important when we are doing it who the audiences and yeah I'll let Anusha maybe continue on on this yeah I love the time management aspect of things because you don't you don't want to overgo on your timing and actually just you know you just cover 20% of your demo while the highlights are in the rest of the demo so you don't want to do that I'm great mention of that point just to add on to that I will mention the where aspect of it right if it is a zoom meeting the preparation is different if it is a live meeting the preparation is totally different while while you're in Zoom you can still have two screens open pull up the relevant resources at your convenience you can you can ask for I say a two minute pause and then have everything ready while the level of preparation for a live event is totally different it needs that extra level of effort to be put in for example if you're presenting on stage then you have to have crisp clear talking points and even if you don't know the answer right you you don't have the uh luxury to pull up resortes that you actually want to show so that extra level of preparation is required for a live demo and in-person presentations and in in addition to that some basic checks like if you're doing a zoom or or a WebEx uh uh demo over WebEx then checking connections making sure you're familiar with that software doing some checks are important and in a live event at things like your placement on the stage the screen size of your demo and where you're picking the laser pointer and showing the right places on the screen will actually capture the attention and help you drive the point home so that's the rare aspect of things and I cannot emphasiz more on the fact of why why someone sitting there in your demo if they feel that it's not worth it sitting through the entire demo then that's the end of the impression that we we making through the demo so throughout the demo be be aligned with the purpose on why you're actually presenting this even if the audience are asking you questions or digressing you from what you're presenting pull them back give them a positive no but say that let's go through this and then maybe answer the rest of the questions you have do not deviate from the per purpose on why you're presenting this demo and last but not the least uh I will make a brief mention of how Amit can also speak more about the how aspect of things the the tools that you use to present what is the maturity what is the context and what will you do after the demo itself is done is also very important Amit uh you can answer that part of how uh in the demo yeah I mean just to add I mean based on prod maturity as anha said Anusha said maybe just showing let's say still in development version while we are talking or to the uh to the stakeholders or which is like ready to roll out I mean does it need like a recorded version or will the demo be shared U let's say a record a recording is done and it'll be shared with the stakeholders we could use a number of new tools as well which have come in beat demo easel there is a new tool that we use within the demo Hub team which is repre so there are a number of options available depending on what the audience needs we can cater our demo or tailor our demo accordingly making sure everybody gets the maximum out of what we're trying to do yeah I see some of these very related the why is tied to the who you know who shows up at your demo or who you delivering to is very linked to why why are we doing this if I'm giving it to an exec they want a high level approach so the why is going to be different then if I'm giving to my peers as developers as to why we're going through that we we were doing almost a code review in a way uh and I see the how similarly tied to like the wear if if you're in person your how is going to be completely different than if you're doing this virtually um and and we mentioned things like demo eone repri and heck I've even resorted to paper printouts of PowerPoints as a plan C you know always be prepared and practice practice practice those demos are those demo gods are not kind and they will get you if you don't practice so by practicing you will find those loopholes I know it sounds ridiculous when you're going man we're just doing a weekly Sprint meeting why should I practice my demo like you or I'll never be on the big stage Never Say Never Never Say Never you you don't know where your career is going one of the things also with practice is that if and when things do occur that are unideal you won't panic and I think that's also a huge component uh obviously we can't be prepared for everything no matter how well we practice but if you've already rehearsed a million times you're not going to instantly combust with fear or panic and you'll be able to handle those really elegantly too so that will keep you in the comfort zone for sure and just as a side tip this is leading up to Creator con we have a number of our presenters who are practicing on their local developer groups so they go to the developer Meetup and practice their content and get feedback and then they can fine-tune it to make it even better uh when they deliver it in the big event all right the the the who what when where why and how sounds very familiar I believe journalists use that or at least they used to when journalists were something else we won't go there that won't go there but uh who what when we why how makes it easy to remember now you've done all the prep you've practiced Now demo time has arrived no problem right all right so it's short time so again uh putting your best foot forward for the impression that you want to make I very well agree with what Lauren said Don't Panic especially if things are not working as expected be prepared of course it comes with experience as one does a lot of demos where uh you can elegantly handle unexpected scenarios as well so when you're especially going for for the demo have everything ready always a backup be a backup instance backup demo uh Backup Tool have a backup or a plan B always ready and be be flexible right if they have to change the timing change the type of a meeting be it a zoom or a live or if even the customer or whoever is watching your demo may need a break they may feel overwhelmed with the content that you're sharing it's a lot that we uh show through a demo so be flexible when you're presenting your content and make sure everyone is up to speak do frequent check-ins and ask them if they have any questions great idea yeah if they want to follow along maybe you have some instances prepped for them to do a handson and see how they feel about what you're showing right it's equally important to make sure that you make that Mark and impression with uh the person or people whom you're delivering to and uh lastly Time Time and Time don't run over be respectful of the time that you've the slot that you've been given and others time ask for more time or another slot if needed otherwise I see a lot of people who don't absolutely like the fact that if you run over then they may feel that they get a bad taste of it because we not respect time so that's it so be respectful be flexible uh check in with the audience and always have a backup plan ready in case your plan doesn't go as expected that time goes faster than you will think I've even resorted to putting an app I think it's called big clock on my phone in front of me so I can I can have a play clock go okay I'm supposed to finish this by 8:40 a.m. I know where I am I know if I have to speed up or slow down so it's it's a matter of again comes down to practice if you didn't prepare you didn't practice you're likely going to run over and the demo gets a bad impression now we kind of talked about everything from the prepping to the rehearsal to the execution of a demo and I think personally I've been very guilty of this as well of like thinking my job is done the demo is over I can get back to developing or whatever I want to do but that's not really the case so what are the steps that should be taken after a demo to really um really take account for all that potential energy that you've earned with a customer or your audience um so you don't you don't lose that yeah so that brings us to the most exciting part of the whole process which is feedback so what we do there I mean whenever the demo is done we need to understand if there are any takeaways I mean be it a Sprint demo be it a demo to a potential customer there will always be some takeaways or action items from there we need to make sure that we uh we capture them correctly and if there are any questions that that need follow up we'll probably go ahead and do that we need to make sure that we request feedback to find out what went well or what didn't just to make sure we can approve uh when we move on to the next demo going forward and just saying a good job or a good demo is not really a good feedback that way you need to be specific uh we need to understand I mean what the audience liked and didn't like from the demos U and and that needs to be honest and if you if we don't really get a time let's say from the customers or the stakeholders whom we presented we can at least request it from uh from our peers or the stakeholders which are probably with you who are in attendance and probably and you understand that they'll give you honest feedback uh that will help in terms of growth in terms of what we do when we go ahead and present the uh demo to the Future stakeholders and we need to make sure if we need to distribute a recording any specific notes just to make sure that the whole process is is closed out so so that's what we we'll do at the end of the demo I love it I I'm reminded of again I'm going to fall back to one of my common use cases Creator con a few years ago we had the CIO of a very large company she was doing her rehearsal and and it it it struck me she came off of stage and looked me in the eye and said how'd it go I said that was great said what can I do better like that's why she's a leader she's always looking for how can we make it better and you're you're never too you know executive to look for improvements I thought that was that was amazing it really left an impression on me that uh you know kind of goes to the other the other phrase that I love you're not that smart and they're not that stupid keep that in when you're doing demos I like the example that you've mentioned Chuck perspectives and having that growth mindset is applicable everywhere right and especially in what we do every day so love that example well the tips we've talked about here sound a lot like the ones we discussed with Julian Mills not so long ago about giving good presentations so listener if you haven't heard those I think we got one or two episodes in there I invite you to go to Dev link. sn/ breakpoint and look them up we did some presentation tips with Julian you're going to find a lot of commonality a good review many of the same things apply prepare know your audience that kind of thing but uh I know this sounds like a lot we covered a lot in this episode uh I will do my best to build in more of an outline for the show notes so you can just follow along there if you want to refer back to them or do a copy paste and make a checklist for yourself go for it we are here to help and I don't want you to have to come back to this in six months and listen to the whole thing all over again if you don't have to if you want I'd love it but you don't have to thank you for joining us today before we leave can anusa you can give the listeners a way to get in touch with you so uh if you'd like to get in touch with me uh look look up look me up on LinkedIn it's Anusha a n s h uh and you can just search for Anusha service now with a product management title and it'll be the first search that will come up on Google I've done that many times since saw that so you can get in touch with me on LinkedIn and uh feel free to drop by and say hi she's figured out her own SEO that's awesome and amid how can the listeners get in touch with you yeah pretty similar you can for Amit Kumar working at service now U and I'll be there on LinkedIn I know my name is popular so you might find a lot of matches but yeah I mean just fine for a guy who has like a very young picture and that'll be me very you got your first birthday party when you were oneyear old [Laughter] not that old as well chck well thank you again for joining us and thank you wonderful listener for listening today don't forget to check out the other service Now podcast you can find them all under servicenow.com community in the events menu we have many many more about vast topics not just developer Focus so give it a listen go subscribe to any or all of them for free to get them automatically delivered to you breakpoint is brought to you by service now Lauren and I are the executive producers somehow I'm not sure how that happened but true as it is I out more about the service now developer program head over to developer. servicenow.com and thank you once again Anusha and Amit for sharing with us today great stuff thank you Chuck it is great speaking with you Lauren and with my um friend Amit on the show I'm sure that the impact and reach of what you have with these podcasts is huge and wishing you uh all the best and more success and more power with whatever you do thank you so much uh thank you for having us it was wonderful uh just sharing our thoughts with you uh we look forward to doing something similar in future as well absolutely all right please let us know what you think about this podcast you can leave feedback or ask questions in the service now Community for more great information on service now development check out the service now developer portal at developer. servicenow.com thanks for listening who wants this one no that I keep tripping across the point I want to make what's the what's the point maybe I can help additionally too for a lot of those things that you un have all the assets ready at at uh your okay let let's do this again thanks I'll do that again what does that mean we can go ahead and do that again as well this one's going to be fun to edit I'm so incredibly sorry for head over to developer. service now but dang it I screwed up the last part thank you so much thank you so much sorry thank you so much Jack and laen