Many approaches can be used for demos in Agile. Of course, there is the traditional meeting to walk through the changes, but after a few of these meetings, the team craves a new approach.
The Demo Walkabout - Tour de Demo
This technique works with a single team or, for more extra fun, all teams on the same sprint schedule. We found this worked great for Product Managers and stakeholders that work with multiple agile teams. We set up a virtual meeting with breakout rooms. In each breakout room had an Agile Team. The meeting was open for a few hours as Product Managers and Stakeholders went from room to room asking questions and getting updates from teams on their applications. It felt more like a conference and less like a demo meeting. The best part of this approach is that it sparked conversations as teams interacted with each other in an unplanned "in the moment" sort of way.
The Speed Demo - 10 Minutes to Save the World
Be quick, be bright, be gone. It's the name of the game. The team puts together a 10-minute fast tour de force of the changes. The trick is to use concise and clear bullet points then open it up for questions. Are we going down the rabbit hole? Take it offline or discuss it at the end of the meeting. For bonus points, we run multiple 10-minute sessions.
Walk-in Your Customer's Foot Steps
We like to walk through the customer journey map and point out where in the customer journey changes were made in the application and how it changes the customer experience. It takes longer to do the demo, but we find we were more inspired and kept more focused.
Plain Business Language
No matter what technique or approach you use, we found it best to keep it in plain business language when showing it to Product Managers and customers. It's not a technical walk-through.
Let us know how these suggestions work for you!