Live versus Recorded Demos
By Derek Neighbors on July 29, 2022
So many Agile teams don’t demo software. Even though a core tenant of Agile is “Working software is a primary measure of progress”.
Some teams I have encountered record a screencast of the functionality and play during their demo instead of doing a live team. This is certainly better than not demoing anything but it has its pros and cons.
Pros
- It allows for a smoother demo as many variables that go wrong in a demo are removed.
- It allows others on the team to give feedback and improve the recording.
- It helps ensure all the functionality was covered in the demo.
- It ends up with an artifact that can be shared with others asynchronously.
Cons
- It can require a lot of “preparation time”
- It covers up potential performance issues.
- It covers up potential queue times or delays in other “micro-services”.
- It may make confusing whether the functionality is actually working in production.
- It can mask the teams confidence of being able to use the functionality in real time.
- It can mask known errors that covered up in video post production.
I have found it powerful for teams to regularly record functionality and share with product and others for feedback BEFORE the work is done. Doing so in a very lightweight screen capture mode, but then live demo the functionality when it is done and in production to a wider audience.
How are your demos helping or hurting your work?
