How to present your software engineering projects

A lot of software engineers struggle at making an impactful pitch of what they have built and not do a great job at showcasing and explaining their hard work in impactful manner. This can make a huge difference. 

Software engineering is a think intensive job and we spend most of the time thinking about systems, latency, complexity of our codes, design of our product or that nasty bug which has been bothering us for hours, which in our mind is, just one more modification away from getting fixed. You get the idea where I am going with it. The point is, while our external etiquettes may not give the you the same vibe, but we are very interesting people if you can just take a look at what’s inside our heads. 

Now coming back to the presentation skills, here are a few points i have learned that might help you in presenting your work in impactful manner:

1. Avoid technical terms which you think, audiences might not understand clearly:

Not everyone of your audiences might have an idea about having your data stored in a max/min heap data structure can reduce the time complexity, in case you have to frequently find min/max among a set of values. So rather than saying it all, Just say, we have a special technique to speed up our xyz operation. Which can beat the previous version / other products by X %. Then explain the data structure only when you are asked. 

2. Make use-case diagrams & high level control flow diagrams:

Having a figure to keep referring to, while talking can bring an understandable flow to your talk. When you are explaining your product make sure you have neatly pointed arrows and you are following them while talking. 

3. Keep your detailed docs on a page and share link; Don’t clutter the presentation with texts:

There will be detailed designs, POCs, Comparisons between approaches, data structures, troubleshooting steps and many more; these don’t necessarily need to be on your deck depending upon the audience. Its always a good idea to document all of them on a separate page which you can share in the end of your deck for people who want to dig.  

Hopefully that will help you!