Sprint Demos

The sprint demo is one of the most exciting part of Scrum. It’s when the team gets an opportunity to show the fruit of their hard labor during the sprint and all the real value they are delivering to the organization. A demo speaks volumes about your progress compared to status reports, speeches and power-points. So, it's worth planning and investing a little time to do the demo well.

Following are some of the tips to make your sprint demos successful:

Plan time and effort for the demo:  When you are planning the tasks for the user story, plan the tasks of planning and preparing for the demo. Don’t wait to ponder about the demo until you’re done with the story. Plan to write test cases that double as demo scripts. 

Prepare for the demo: Think through an interesting scenario - preferably from an end user perspective -  that you'd want to demo. Plan personas with real name and personalities. Select team member who will role play these personas. Create the necessary test data which look as real as possible. 

Practice: Run through the demo end to end at least a couple of times. Time the demo and record it, if possible, with some screen recording tools like Screencastify or QuickTime etc.

Focus on DoD: While showing the demo, please explain why you think the story is complete in all aspects according to the DoD that you have defined at the start of the sprint. 

Keep it short:  Focus on showing what’s interesting and what’s valuable about each user stories. It should be short and succinct in order to capture the attention and interest of the audience.

Plan the logistics: Study the place and stage (the conference room, lab, a new scrum workplace) properly and make sure you have all necessary tools and gadgets to show your demo. Plan and download all required software in your computer for showing and projecting the demo for your audience.

Plan for failure: A lot of times, the Murphy's laws (this can also be termed as the law of demos) could be in work. Whatever that can fail, may actually fail. So, plan your back-ups including a back-up script. Also the recorded demo could be used as a last resort if all else fail.

Most of the times, the Sprint demos are attended by multiple stakeholders such as the customer and the higher leadership in the organization. This gives the Scrum team ample visibility within the organization. So, make your moves well and carefully!

One note of caution though!

Giving a demo of the working software that the Scrum team just got done is a common practice at most sprint review meetings. But let’s not mistake the goal of the sprint review for a ritual we might perform to achieve the goal.The Sprint team should not go overboard and give undue importance to demo only. The goal of a sprint review is beyond the demo. The Sprint review should focus on how far we are from completing the product as promised and what changes we can bring to adapt to new realities of technical challenges, budget situation and new requirements. So, focusing on DoD and showcasing real product is fundamental. Resist the temptation of showing something nice, but half cooked, un-tested and cannot be released to the customers.