Michael's Workbench

A classic Agile practice is that a demo at the end of the sprint includes everything that was done in that sprint. The purpose of the demo is to report on the backlog items as being done, and get a sign-off from product owner.

What do you show in that demo? For new features, that have a UI visibility, it’s pretty obvious – you show the feature.

But what do you demo for a feature on the backend, like an API change?

What do you demo during the end game, when all the features are done and the focus is on tests and bug fixes?

Or when you have a very large feature that will not all fit into a single sprint, and will have design, development and testing split between several sprints? (Agile purists would probably say that you have to split this feature into several small features that will each fit into a single iteration, but it doesn’t make practical sense in some cases)

Since I’ve been asked these questions, and more than once, here’s a summary of what I consider a reasonable approach to sprint demos, coming from a premise that every item done in the sprint has to be shown in the demo, and that if it hasn’t been shown, it hasn’t been done.

Type of Item	What to Demo
New feature with UI	Interactive demo, showing the feature
New feature on the backend	If practical, interactive demo of a unit or functional test, validating the feature. If not practical (e.g., takes too long), output of a previously executed unit or functional test.
Bug fix	Same as feature – interactive demo of a test that now passes, or output of previously executed passing test
Design work	Design document walkthrough (not a review, a walkthrough that demonstrates the document is ready for review, or that review comments have been addressed)
Documentation	Documentation walkthrough (same as for design document)
Test automation	Interactive execution of automated test suite, showing resulting output. If not practical, output of previously executed test suite, and demo of where in CI environment the new tests have been deployed

What do you demo?