Last updated: March 23, 2007

Product Release Presentation

Periodically during the semester you will be releasing a version of your product to your customer. With each release you need to make a semi-formal Product Release Presentation with PowerPoint slides. It must address all of the items listed below. Plan on your presentation taking from 30 minutes to one hour. Expect to be asked questions. Your presentation should include coverage of the following topics:

1. Provide a high-level statement that captures the project scope and motivation.  Be sure that you include everything the customer has told you is important.  In your first presentation it is important to thoroughly review the scope and motivation to help ensure that you and the customer are on the same page.  In subsequent presentations it is helpful to retain this information in the slide set so that you provides a complete picture of what your project is about, but as you present the information only provide a high level summary and talk about anything that has changed since the last presentation.

2. Provide a summary of the major product requirements & features.  This should encompass the entire product, not just the current release.  The comments appearing in item 1 about inclusion and presentation of information apply here as well.

3. Describe your current product design. Remember that good, clear diagrams are very important to the successful communication of complex information.  Use a block diagram and / or other visual means to represent your design.  It is best to provide a complete product design and then provide some indication of what is contained in the current release.  Try to avoid over reliance on generic or abstract architectural models.  Present a specific design for your product using appropriate names for the subsystems, blocks, and modules.  Make sure that the representation has enough detail that you can use it to explain how certain operations or activities are performed.

4. Describe what is contained in the current release. This should include a list of the features that are being delivered.  Describe the release status. List any features planned for the release that were not delivered, any limitations present in the release, issues that you are having, and any open (unresolved) defects in the release.

5. Describe the testing you performed on the release. Include a plot of the total number of test cases in the test suite and the number of those test cases that are passing on a daily basis.

6. Provide a plot of total lines of product code in your system.  Use the plot provided by StatCVS-XML.

7. Provide a line plot of the total number of defects found and the total number of defects fixed.  It is best if the time axis shows daily increments.

8. Provide a demonstration of the main features of the release.

9. Identify what you want the customer to do with this release and when you need results reported to you.

10. Provide a summary of project status.  Be sure to include discussion of how you are doing relative to your published project schedule and task list.  The bottom line question you need to answer is "Are we on schedule?"  Review your expectations for work over the period continuing to the next release.  Review the status of project risks, which may include items that were not originally identified in you initial risk assessment.  If new risks have arisen, talk about what you plan to do to mitigate them.  Then address the state of the project from the perspective of your available resources (people, time, equipment, software, etc.).  Be able to answer the questions:  "What else do we need to complete the next phase on time and deliver what is expected?" and "What are our options to address these issues?"

11. Provide a brief summary of the content and timing of the next release.  If it is appropriate, you may also discuss issues related to the next release.