Work Retrospective II: Improve the demo

At one of my clients after a we did a work retrospective, my PairCoach and I decided to launch another work retrospective, yet now concentrated on the demo. We planned this after the team had been receiving negative feedback on their demo. For the record I have to mention that the demo (or show and tell as they call it), the team did just before the retrospective, was one of their best.
At the start of the retrospective I told them I liked the demo, yet, I was sure they could still improve. So the theme of the retro was now:

“Invent the demo you are proud of.”

Just like the work retrospective, the format was quite strict.

  1. Set the stage: here we asked about how safe they felt inside their team/company.
  2. Select a partner with who you will work this retrospective. To make an even team, the Product Owner joined the team.
  3. As a (full) team select one story that we demoed this morning
  4. With your partner prepare a new demo for that story
    ( 5 minutes)
  5. explain Perfection Game
  6. First duo does their demo (the rest of the team writes a personal improvement in the format of a Perfection Game while the first team does it)
    (max 5 minutes)
  7. re-prepare your demo based on your previous plan and the PG both of you wrote down.
    (max 5 minutes)
  8. second demo + PerfectionGame for others
    (max 5 minutes)
  9. re-prepare your demo based on your previous plans and the PerfectionGames both of you wrote down
    (max 5 minutes)
  10. third demo+ PerfectionGames for others
    (max 5 minutes)
  11.   re-prepare your demo based on your previous plans and the PerfectionGames both of you wrote down (max 3 minutes)
  12. fourth demo

Although the team was annoyed about doing a demo retro after a much better demo, they took the challenge and they did 4 very creative demo’s.
They selected a kind of technical story about webservices. If you would ask me, I would not even demo this. Why?  Client don’t understand it, there is no real business value etc etc.

In retrospect, that is exactly why this was a perfect story to do this kind of demo retrospective.
Why? I saw people role play what is happening behind the scene. I saw people explaining with a physical map. etc etc.

To some people it’s annoying to do 5 times the same demo in less then 1 hours yet, that is exactly how most music bands rehearse. Playing the same 3 minute song over and over and over and over …. I like a good rock concert.

The French group Indochine, did a major gig in the Paris “Stade de France” on June 26 2010.
Although they had just finished a tour in France and they had perfected their setlist during that tour. They decided to rehearse in a separate location, where they could mimic the size of the location. As they had never played this size of stadium, they rehearsed offsite in a real size location for 4 days.
That’s the way to create great gigs and great shows. Now you know you have some idea’s how you can do the same for your teams demo…