Stakeholder Demos
At the end of each Sprint, a viable product must be ready to demo. This session allows stakeholders to understand the progress of the project and to see what the team is doing and build relationships with the individuals on the team.
Presenting Team’s role
Team and Product Owner demo to stakeholders the working product at its current state.
- All members of the Presenting Team must be present.
- Present in non-technical language.
- Narrate the demo from the user’s perspective, and make sure to point out the business value of the work where appropriate.
- Do not show code.
- Do not show slides.
- Do not show unfinished work.
- Remove any broken or unfinished work from the material that is demo’d so as not to confuse stakeholders or give the impression that the team is doing sloppy work.
- Simply show what has been completed at this point.
Q&A Team’s role
Other teams may be involved in the demo. For in-class demos, for each presenting team, one other team will be assigned as the “Q&A Team”.
- All members of the Q&A Team must be present
- The Q&A Team will be responsible for asking questions of the demo team and providing constructive criticism.
- Each Q&A Team member must ask at least one question and provide at least one piece of constructive criticism, such as a suggestion for improvement or a helpful tip.
Members of the Q&A Team are considered Stakeholders for the purposes of the demo.
Stakeholders’ role
Stakeholders may suggest new features or changes to existing features.
- The Product Owner is responsible for collecting these and integrating them into the Product Backlog in consultation with the team.
- Not all stakeholder suggestions must be accommodated, but the team must be able to justify why certain feedback was not accommodated if questioned.
Preparation
Come prepared!
- Keep it short and to the point.
- Have the software already loaded and on-screen.
- Agree beforehand on whose computer you will present and how the team is going to divide the labor of the presentation.
- Make sure the demo works before demo’ing!
- Do not to waste the time of the stakeholders or create the impression of disorder.
- There is nothing more disturbing to a stakeholder than a team that starts discussing among themselves how the are going to do the demo while they are already doing the demo.