When you partner with Tandem’s software consultants you’ll have regular opportunities to participate in demos. In today’s Tandem Roundtable, Dominic, Aji, Chris, and Sara explain what a demo is and how you can make each one a valuable experience.
What is a demo, and why does Tandem conduct them?
Dominic: To me, a demo is a meeting where we show our clients work and progress we have made up until that point.
Aji: We show our current work that we’ve just done and are about to release, and give the client stakeholders a chance to see it more live than when it was wireframes or theoretical. Regular demos allow us to ‘fail faster’: if something is wrong, we want to know as soon as possible.
Chris: We might present wireframes in a demo, that would be an example of showing work early on before it even gets into build. So if there’s something in design that doesn’t fit what the stakeholders expect for the final outcome, showing those early helps catch problems earlier than later.
Sara: With the demos we do on my project, we don’t show the code itself but we’ll show the wireframe and then recap what we did last sprint, and where we’ve progressed now. Then we’ll do a click-through to show the flow for the user, and it’s really helpful because in the middle of our demo someone might raise their hand because they’re confused. We get the feedback right there and then.
Demos are also a good way to gauge how our clients feel about the project. Sometimes they think they want a feature but when they actually interact with it, they don’t love it — or they do love it and want to incorporate it into other places in the app!
Aji: A lot of the time in the early stages of a project, a client will have an idea of the feeling they want a product to convey, but won‘t know what words to use to communicate that idea. It’s easier to narrow down on that vision when they have something to react to in a demo. I’ve seen demos help clients understand the feature better and get great ideas about future features – it gets your gears turning.
Chris: It helps our stakeholders get into a more agile mindset, especially if they aren’t familiar with agile going into it. It helps them think on their feet when they’re getting a demo every week or every two weeks on a regular cadence. It helps us make sure we’re aligned with the ultimate outcomes you want to see.
Dominic: In one of my projects, we showed our client the design for the filters we were working on and they really liked it. Then when we implemented the design, we had a demo where we showed how the filtering worked. When they saw it in action, the client decided that the filter logic should be flipped. Originally we had a signal type like ‘Bluetooth’ show only Bluetooth devices, but in that demo they decided to switch it so that by clicking ‘Bluetooth’ you see everything except those devices.
Aji: Filters are such a good example because everyone has an idea of how the filter should work and everybody thinks it’s completely intuitive, but actually being able to click and toggle through and talk about a real thing is so different than trying to plan it out using ‘and/or’ math on a whiteboard. When you can just click the thing, you learn quickly how the filters should behave.
What is a Tandem demo like?
Chris: We level-set with our clients at onboarding so they understand what our agile ceremonies are and what to expect in a demo.
Aji: It goes in line with how we always work: the contact area between our people and your people is large; we’re always in conversation. Working with Tandem is a collaborative process and working with us in a demo is no different.
Chris: We like to have a lot of engagement with our clients, and it’s not just a show and tell. It’s also not just a progress check in. It’s more about uncovering assumptions and uncovering the loose ends and edge cases while still demonstrating our progress.
We do a lot of storytelling and level-setting with the client to showcase that we understand the flow of how they want the feature to function, showing it back to them in the way we’ve come up with. Then we can ask, “does it fit your expectations?”
Sara: At Tandem, we allot enough time for our demos so that if anyone has questions in the middle, it’s ok — there’s no need to feel rushed. We’ve budgeted that time into the agenda because we expect to have conversation throughout the demo.
Dominic: We have all the team members present during our demos. I try to present whenever I can. I think it helps build my consulting skills, being able to describe something to the client and give a high level overview and not get too technical.
Aji: We share presentation responsibilities so that the person who was closest to each piece of work gets credit for what they did — and also, to enable our clients to ask more incisive questions directly to the people who are deep in the coding weeds of the actual feature.
Chris: If there’s any staffing changes on a project, we’ll address those in a demo. Any requirements-gathering also has a regular place in a demo, and we do have a space at the end of the agenda for any big questions that weren’t asked throughout.
Aji: Because they feel like the wrapup of a chunk of work demos are also a great place to have shoutouts and kudos, to celebrate our wins among the full team. Those are always great.
Chris: We also like to provide space for you to provide updates from your business. Let us know what you’re working on, what context has changed in your industry, what your concerns are.
How can Tandem clients make demos as valuable as possible?
Chris: Be attentive, be engaged, be willing to collaborate and raise your hand if you see something that doesn’t look quite right — or something that you like.
Aji: Have the mindset of coming to a demo to be a participant rather than a viewer. This is the best opportunity to have you involved at a close level to the work. Sitting next to me while I’m writing code won’t be valuable for you, but showing you a first draft at a demo allows you to talk about it, ask questions, and be directly involved in the product’s creation. I’ve sometimes opened up the code editor and changed something during the demo to respond to a client’s thoughts — it’s real-time iteration and collaboration in a very tangible way.
Sara: Never be afraid to ask a question. That’s what demos are for, to have that open discussion. No client should ever feel like it’s a silly question to ask. All questions are valuable and helpful.
Chris: And never make assumptions either! Avoiding assumptions helps weed out some of the problems. I’ve seen assumptions — related to how technology works in other industries or other pieces of software — that aren’t valid when it comes to this product. One example I’ve seen is phone numbers and how phone numbers should display, and that was a crucial assumption to uncover as we worked on that piece of software.
Ready to work with a team that engages with your stakeholders every step of the way? Send us a message!
