The Agile Pocket Guide: A Quick Start to Making Your Business Agile Using Scrum and Beyond

Chapter 14

Demonstration of the Product

The Tribe is getting excited about putting structure into place where there was none previously. It is apparent that after each sprint there needs to be a demonstration or review of the product so that the Product Owner and business can see the positive output of the Agile Team. This is a great opportunity to get some early feedback from the Product Owner about what is working and acceptable in the product and what isn't. This feedback can help the team during the next sprints to determine what needs to change from the previous sprint. The demonstration of the product needs to showcase a fully functional piece of the product that the team considers reviewable and acceptable by the Product Owner. In software-related environments, the demonstration proves that functionality is potentially shippable, or ready to be put into production. While the demo may be in a development or quality-assurance environment and all functionality may not be accessible, the software needs to be demonstrated as much as the capabilities of the environment allow.

During this demo, you'll want to make sure that the Product Owner is in the driver's seat. You may feel that a developer should show off all of the features, but through experience you'll find that the software sometimes acts differently and may behave in odd ways when someone other than a developer drives. You'll want to make sure that you navigate the meeting so that unnecessary distractions won't stall ...