Revisiting the Importance of Sprint Review Demos
I finally got around to watching the wonderful interview of Maarten Damlijn by Alex Polyakov on Alex's, "Let's Talk Agile" podcast. I loved reading Maarten's book, "Driving Value with Sprint Goals" and I enjoy his newsletter on Substack. Alex is a good friend and is the CEO at ProjectSimple.ai.
If you have the time, I encourage you to listen to what I found to be an interesting conversation. Alex and Maarten did not always agree on everything which I love because it helps bring out the nuance on the topics they covered. There were viewpoints where I was closer to Maarten's viewpoint, and there were other times when I was on "Team Alex". In all cases, it made me think hard about my beliefs!
I do want to dig a bit deeper here on one particular topic they covered - Maarten's statement that doing demos at the sprint review are a waste of time. You can see the relevant part of the conversation here.
I am a big believer in getting customer feedback throughout the product discovery and product delivery lifecycle (Bringing Customers into the Sprint Review - Part 1, Bringing Customers into the Sprint Review - Part 2, Bringing Customers into the Sprint Review - Part 3). One of the ways we get feedback from customers is by interacting with them during the sprint review with the latest working software we have created. So at first, Maarten's statement seemed heretical to me.
Maarten made a couple of good points:
If we use CI/CD, users may already have experienced the working software in production by the time the sprint review happens and we should have usage metrics we are capturing based on that usage.
If the team is demoing simply to justify that they were busy and earned their money during the sprint, this is not a very valuable use of anyone’s time.
In both cases, Maarten's point is that the time spent demoing could be better used doing something else.
My take on the first point is that of course we should be using production usage data as part of our customer feedback mechanism, but that doesn't replace having real-time conversations with our customers on how useful the current working software is in helping them get their jobs done. I see it as a BOTH-AND not an EITHER-OR.
On the second point, I 100% agree with Maarten. This is similar to some daily stand up meetings where everyone gives updates that are mostly to justify how they spent their time the previous day. This is indicative of a low-trust environment. If this is the only reason why the team is giving a demo at the sprint review, there is no need to do a demo. Instead, spend time fixing the culture so team members don't feel a need to justify their time. I also agree that there are other valuable conversations between the team and its customers during a sprint review that can and perhaps should happen outside of a demo.
I also wanted to note Alex's point about the value of the demo as giving the team a chance to not only take pride of ownership in what they delivered but also gain first-hand recognition from both customers and stakeholders. To further the point, the sprint review, including a meaningful demo, is a great way for the team to feel connected with their customers and recognized by their executives.
I'll close out with one question I have for my friend Alex. You (Alex) mentioned during the episode that Maarten was the first celebrity guest you had on your show? Hmmm...
Link to Gary’s previous appearance as a guest on the “Let’s Talk Agile” podcast