One of the biggest milestones that you can hit while developing in a startup is actually getting that first demo out the door.

All the months (or weeks…or hours in the case of StartupWeekend) of planning, developing and scheming all comes down to a few clicks of a mouse button got get something out there. Then it doesn’t work. Then you think you’ve got the problem figured out, hack around with the code for an hour, and it still doesn’t work.

Getting the demo to work in a development environment, it seems, isn’t pain-free but it’s much easier than getting it to work in a production environment (at least from an outside…non developer’s point of view).

Two weekends ago, 70+ entrepreneurs got together to see if the impossible could be done: start an entire company from concept to complete in a matter of 2.5 days. We would get to demo stage a few times and then once it hit that projection screen it seemed to have broken somewhere on its way into the tubes (of the internets). Eventually, we got something that seemed like it was going to work but then getting it to market was exponentially more difficult…but you can read all about that on the StartupWeekend blog.

The same kind of experience has been happening in the socialthing! camp lately where we try to get to a certain point and it seems like something went awry somewhere. The development team sits in front of the screens for a while and think they’ve got the problem licked and then something else comes up. It’s a never-ending cycle.

I can give two pieces of advice here. One to the team and one to the entrepreneur that is “managing” that team.

1. First off, don’t tell someone your unrealistic goal date, because you’re never going to make it that way. Give your team an internal deadline and make sure that code gets locked, not continually changed or improved hours before that deadline. Things are bound to break. It’s also going to reduce your team’s credibility in actually being able to deliver that demo to anyone that you told that unrealistic date to. The team needs to have realistic goals set, and it shouldn’t just be the manager of that team preaching those goals. It needs to be a collaborative effort or else things will fall apart and you will really set completely unrealistic goals no matter how possible you think they are. You’re not the one developing the site…get over that much…you are ultimately at your developers’ mercy. The moral of the story is just this: give your developers a realistic goal to develop towards a demo or version of your app and then tell everyone else a few days ater that.

2. Secondly, Don’t come down on your developers if something didn’t go right. First, compliment them on the work done thus far and then see what went wrong and figure out the best course of action to resolve it. I can’t stress how important this is. As soon as your developers respect you on a fundamental level, you’ll be able to work in an environment with them much better.

[tags]startup weekend, startupweekend, demos, demo, developers, socialthing[/tags]