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The Sprint Demonstration is the formal meeting where the Scrum Team demonstrates to the Product Owner the performance of each deliverable that was created during the Sprint.

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Quick reference

Sprint Demonstration

The Sprint Demonstration is the formal meeting where the Scrum Team demonstrates to the Product Owner the performance of each deliverable that was created during the Sprint.

When to Use Revenues and Profits

The Sprint Demonstration is usually immediately after the completion of the last day of the Sprint. It is normally the following day.

Instructions

The Sprint Demonstration is the only external review of the project deliverables in the Agile/Scrum process. It is the meeting where the Product Owner determines whether the Scrum Team has completed each story in the Sprint Backlog.

  • This is a formal documented meeting. It often has meeting minutes and the results are filed in the project archives.
  • This is a meeting between the Product Owner and Scrum Team. The Product Owner will often invite senior managers, business team members, or other subject matter experts who provided input to the Stories to participate in the meeting. However, that is a decision for the Product Owner to make.
  • During the course of the meeting, the Scrum Team will demonstrate, and if appropriate, allow meeting attendees to test the results of the stories. The demonstration and test should be based upon the documented Demo Criteria on the Story Card. If during the demo, other criteria are identified, a new Story Card should be created by the Product Owner.
  • If some stories were only partially completed, the Scrum Team can demonstrate the portion that was completed and a new or modified Story Card can be created for the remaining work.
  • If a story was never started, the Scrum Team will provide any roadblocks or other impediments that may have contributed to why it was not started.
  • If you are taking the Scrum Master, Product Owner, or Agile Practitioner version of this course, there will be another session that will discuss how to plan and facilitate a Sprint Demo meeting.

Hints and Tips

  • It is normally a good idea for the Product Owner to invite key stakeholders to this meeting, especially if they have concerns about the progress of the project.
  • Take as long as you need at this meeting.  I have seen some done in 30 minutes and others take over 4 hours. Spend the time needed to fully validate that the deliverables are acceptable.
  • In the museum website upgrade project, I invited the museum director, museum staff, and the museum Board of Directors to review the Sprint Demo. About 25% attended, which was in line with what I expected.
  • We reviewed the first three stories:
    • Response web template was acceptable to all. We selected an iPhone, iPad, and laptop to review the responsive resizing. We also reviewed using the four most common browsers.
    • The fifteen existing pages were all transferred. All of the text and pictures were there and they looked good in all three formats and with all browsers.
    • All of the contact buttons worked in all formats and browsers.
    • The Scrum Team identified that the donor button would only work with Paypal, (which was demonstrated) but would not work with the direct merchant service account. This issue would require further study and analysis and a Story Card was written for this feature for the next Sprint. The Scrum Team explained that they just ran out of time to resolve this before the end of the Sprint.
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  • 00:04 Hi, I'm Ray Sheen.
  • 00:05 When working with an agile scrum project the key step for
  • 00:09 assessing project quality occurs at the end of the sprint with a meeting
  • 00:13 that's commonly called the sprint demo.
  • 00:17 This is the moment of truth for the scrum team, they must prove that what they have
  • 00:21 been developing does what it was supposed to do.
  • 00:24 The sprint demo is a formal documented meeting that normally occurs the day
  • 00:27 after the sprint effort completes.
  • 00:29 By formal, there are usually minutes of the meeting, attendance lists, and
  • 00:33 the results all get filed in the project archives.
  • 00:37 Officially the meeting is between the scrum team and the product owner.
  • 00:40 The team reviews and demonstrates the results of every story card completed,.
  • 00:45 And the product owner decides whether to accept the results or not.
  • 00:48 Most of the time the product owner will invite some of the management or
  • 00:52 business team to attend also.
  • 00:54 However, the acceptance decision is made by the product owner,
  • 00:58 not all the invited guests.
  • 01:00 The result of every story is demonstrated.
  • 01:02 Don't rush this meeting, take the time to check out everything.
  • 01:06 If appropriate, the demonstration is conducted as a test by the product owner
  • 01:11 and, or invited guests.
  • 01:12 In some cases the demonstration will be a presentation or analysis.
  • 01:16 Whatever the form and format, the demonstration is done using the demo
  • 01:20 criteria from the story card as the standard.
  • 01:23 Many times the product owner or
  • 01:25 invited guest may ask the results to do more than the demo criteria.
  • 01:28 If it can, great.
  • 01:30 If it cannot, and the product owner determines that they would like it to,
  • 01:34 the product owner will create a new story card for a later sprint.
  • 01:38 If the demonstration reveals that the results of the work by the scrum team does
  • 01:43 not meet the demo criteria.
  • 01:45 Or if the scrum team identifies in the meeting that they did not finish a story.
  • 01:49 The product owner will determine if a new story card is required.
  • 01:53 Or if the original story cards should still be used.
  • 01:56 If the scrum team knows that the story is not complete, they should identify any
  • 02:00 roadblocks or impediments that prevented them from completing the story.
  • 02:05 Again, the product owner determines whether or not to rewrite the story card.
  • 02:10 Now let's review the roles, responsibilities, and
  • 02:13 deliverables with respect to the sprint demo.
  • 02:15 As you look at this table you may think I've overlooked something.
  • 02:19 This doesn't show the scrum team providing any deliverables.
  • 02:22 Well, that's because during the sprint execution the scrum team completed and
  • 02:27 delivered the results of each story in order to move that story to the done
  • 02:31 column.
  • 02:32 I didn't want to imply that they had to do that work again.
  • 02:35 You can see in the responsibility portion of the table that they must demonstrate
  • 02:40 the result, but
  • 02:40 my point is that the result was actually completed during sprint execution.
  • 02:45 The scrum master is a facilitator of this meeting.
  • 02:48 They keep track of which stories are accepted as done, which are not.
  • 02:52 They may help the product owner plan the backlog for the next sprint.
  • 02:56 The product owner is the person who must make the decisions in this meeting.
  • 03:00 They review the results and provide a thumbs up or thumbs down on each story.
  • 03:05 Senior management is often invited, and
  • 03:07 their input is used by the product owner to make their decision.
  • 03:11 Let's look at an example.
  • 03:13 Several times in the past,
  • 03:15 I've alluded to a project I was involved with at a museum website upgrade.
  • 03:19 Let's look at what happened in the sprint demo from one of their sprints.
  • 03:22 The sprint backlog had 15 stories associated with the review of
  • 03:26 the website pages.
  • 03:28 In this case, we did the review on an iPhone, and iPad, and a laptop.
  • 03:32 We also looked at everything using the four most popular web browsers.
  • 03:36 The content of each of the 15 pages was compared to the old site.
  • 03:40 We showed that the text and pictures were the same.
  • 03:42 What was new is that the pages were now responsive.
  • 03:45 We also checked all the links at all the pages.
  • 03:48 Now at this point,
  • 03:49 the scrum team could have said that they provided just what was on the old pages.
  • 03:54 Fortunately, they went beyond this, and fix the broken links,
  • 03:57 that were found on a few of the old pages.
  • 04:00 We then checked all of the contact buttons, and donor buttons.
  • 04:03 There was a problem with the donor button, that the scrum team identified for us.
  • 04:08 The button works great if they use PayPal, but
  • 04:10 it would not work with our other merchant services account.
  • 04:14 Scrum team explained that this was the last part of the lowest priority task in
  • 04:18 the sprint backlog.
  • 04:19 And they just ran out of time to get that done.
  • 04:23 The code from the old page would not work in the new template.
  • 04:26 And they had not had time to find or
  • 04:28 develop new code that would work in this template.
  • 04:32 In this case, the product owner wrote a new story card for
  • 04:35 just that feature to include on the next sprint.
  • 04:38 The sprint demo was a combination of that sprint.
  • 04:41 This is the time for the team to show the product owner and
  • 04:44 stakeholders what they've accomplished.

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