In my current work we make web applications for Intranet and Extranet mainly for e-Government usage. We don’t have a very big team of developers and designers but it’s an excellent one in my opinion. It happens that I validate the coding, the quality, features, but always ask the developer to exhibit his work to the boss.
The problems happens when developers show their work in the same way that they show it to me, with a clean database, without testing data … etc. Personally I’m used to accept that especially when coding is clear you can easily check if there is problems … etc. But for a manager, it’s very different, it’s the same thing as you are showing your product to a customer, he want to see his final product working with the feature he wants.
Even if the boss was expert and know about technical details, I prefer during a presentation showing a static page with features available rather than a dynamic page where he won’t see the difference from the old one. Sometimes, making data available is not the easy task especially if the application work with different databases, and you don’t have rights to insert data.
But the point is, while making a presentation will you tell all these stories to your superior/customer in the beginning and show him an application with all features that he asked for but not visible, or show a demo where he can see the new features then you discuss the integration of data with other databases and other administrative issues ?
Anyway after the presentation I spend half an hour explaining thing that I have explained hundred times before and God knows if the lesson have been understood or no. Anyway I’m not the boss, not even the project manager, I’m just one of the developers, but in addition to my work I’m asked to put all the development projects on rails, and release the final products.
