Pain is temporary, failure lasts forever

Lean, agile living for the running mother of Peter

2007-11-27

The purpose of the demo

After today's demo, a very unplanned session due to the absences of some key resources, we've come to discuss the purpose of the demo. Is the demo just a presentation of new, implemented functionality, a presentation of what we have worked with, or a presentation of work flows made possible after this sprint?

The problem is that different viewers have different needs: the sales person is not really interested in what is new: he wants to know how and what he should include in a demo while our operations division wants to know what we have changed. And our integration department want to know how their integrations are affected.

One solution is to try to meet all these needs but then the demo becomes to long and some parts become boring for some of the viewers. Or worse: it's unclear if something is of interest to them so they stop listening. Another option is to hold several demo sessions. But then you miss the discussions between different types of users. The solution. Well, I don't know. I'll have to think this through. The same goes for the product owner and other stakeholders. If they don't know what they want, how could I?

4 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

I always provide each viewer with a one page document highliting the new/enhanced functions that are relevant to their function within the organization.

As an example, for Sales guys I would focus on what is in this release that makes the product more valuable to their prospects/cunstomers. What customer pain is solved?

If you do this, you will gain much respect from others within the organization.

November 27, 2007 at 7:02 PM  
Blogger Anna Forss said...

That is a very good idea. What we've also concluded that things we have done that is not visible in the product should not be included in the general demo session. This research projects and POCs will only be mentioned to all but demonstrated to product owner, so he gets the complete picture of ROI for the sprint

November 28, 2007 at 5:52 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Thanks. I did forget to mention that you would have to find an evangelist within each area (i.e, sales) that could sit down with you and help you define what will "push his guys buttons".

November 28, 2007 at 6:36 PM  
Blogger Anna Forss said...

and we need the time to really sit down and talk. make the evangelists feel that we are available.

November 28, 2007 at 8:49 PM  

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