I've faced this a couple times. Basically, they want something they can show off and dont really know or care about the quality of the work. The problem is that

I've faced this a couple times. Basically, they want something they can show off and dont really know or care about the quality of the work. The problem is that all of the corners cut early on begin to accumulate, and major design issues quickly become daily maintenance headaches once something is in production and up to the point of "pitching". What is more likely to happen is you will have a bunch of basic stuff that is relatively easy to implement and any advanced/killer features will become very hard to implement, and most of the effort will just go in to keeping it going, rather than improving it. Chances are, taking the quick-and-dirty approach won't get to the deadline either, it will just show pieces of early functionality earlier, but wont have a foundation to get to the solid product. The early development you do is laying a foundation, while you are in that phase, you can still scrap pieces of it wholesale and rewrite it, but once you start building on that foundation, you will not be able to make a skyscraper if you are building it on a tar pit lined with tin foil. And "best practices" (TDD,agile,whatever) are no guarantee that you will get it right, either.