Understand Your Audience

One of the most important considerations when framing your script for a demo is understanding who your audience is. Each stakeholder may possess their own goals and experience their own challenges, which will influence what information you need to share with them and how you present it. Therefore, spending time before the demo to understand the aspects of your solution that are relevant to the audience will help you communicate more effectively. Before the demo, try asking your stakeholders key questions that help you understand them and anticipate their concerns.

For Example:

• “What would happen if we don't change the way things are done today?”
• “What are the biggest challenges you experience in your role?”
• “What are you expecting the new solution to do for you?”
• “What is your biggest concern with changing to a new system?”

Tell a Story

While it is important to walk the audience through all new capabilities and functionalities during your demo, it is even more important to plan your script to weave in product features and functions through the story you are telling. To open your story, you will want to provide a high-level overview of what you will be presenting to set the structure for your demo. Additionally, you will want to highlight for your audience what has changed since the last time you demoed for them and any specific areas for which you are seeking their input.

Providing a day-in-the-life narrative will help the audience imagine themselves as true users of the product and will allow you to educate them on the features, benefits, and logical structure of the solution being demoed. In order to achieve this, you may present the audience with contextual visual artifacts in addition to showing them the system. For instance, you may show a high-level, logical architectural diagram depicting how the different components of the system work together to meet the needs and goals of their business. Further, during the demo, enter realistic test data throughout all the forms and other user interfaces to better connect with your audience.

For Example:

• Imagine a component of the case management product you are demonstrating includes handling maintenance requests for several corporate office buildings.
• While presenting, instead of writing “Test reason #1” in a field that requires the reason for the urgent nature of the request, you can write “Building-wide wireless internet connection outage – unable to operate without connection.”
• By using meaningful test data, you can bring to life the functionality developed and facilitate stakeholder understanding of the connection between their specific work routines and the product.

Incorporate Change Management Best Practices

Each new user story to be developed will introduce change for users to varying degrees – whether it be a change from a paper-based process to an automated process, a change in business operations, or the introduction of a new business process or role, among others. As a result, when preparing for a demo you will need to utilize the stakeholder analysis you previously conducted to assess the impact of these changes on your audience and to lead your demo with empathy. If you go over changes too quickly or do not spend time explaining what has changed and why, this may cause undue stress and/or confusion among the audience and can lead to audience disengagement and distrust.

Prepare yourself to jot down any action items or critical concerns that emerge from your demo session and follow up with your scrum master and/or Organizational Change Management (OCM) team on these matters. Be sure to follow up on these items with your audience the next time you meet with them to show them that they have been heard. Additionally, while preparing, you will want to be cognizant of the language you will use to ensure the audience follows and to enable them to imagine a direct impact on their work.

For Example:

• Suppose an audience member asks about the reason for a change in business process that is inherently introduced through a new piece of functionality you have demoed.
• Try to anticipate such concerns by preparing talking points prior to the demo to communicate what benefits are provided or pain points removed by each change.
• Additionally, your previous stakeholder analysis may highlight for you the issues of utmost importance to your audience, guiding the perspective through which you explain change.

Think About Questions You May Be Asked

During your demo, you may be required to answer some challenging questions. In anticipation of these discussions, it is a very helpful practice to imagine the types of questions users may ask you and to jot down the types of responses appropriate for each case. This will allow you to address questions succinctly and clearly to bring users to a point of understanding. Additionally, this preparation will likely give you the confidence to be able to pause and only respond to a question once you have truly understood what the audience member is asking.

Although it may be a tempting thought, it is important to remember that silence is not always golden. Just because the audience is silent does not mean they do not have any feedback or that they are completely satisfied with the product presented up until now. Therefore, by posing questions to your audience with regards to components of your demonstration, you may encourage stakeholders who have been previously inclined to stay quiet to speak up with their suggestions and questions.

For Example:

• You may notice that a particular feature of your demonstration is the main subject of conversation with your audience.
• Whether the audience dwelled on it thoughtfully without much conversation or whether many vocalized their thoughts, you may chime in with a question such as “Why does this particular feature stand out to you right now?”
• These questions may in fact welcome an environment of interaction and feedback, if done correctly and if asked in a neutral tone that does not box the audience in.

Rehearse and Set Up

Giving a demo is unlike other presentations. You must simultaneously juggle the impact of your demonstration on the stakeholders, as well as all the workings of the demonstration and your interaction with the audience. This is a lot to balance and will be difficult to maintain without rehearsing. Rehearsing is not meant to make demonstrations sound scripted or overly pristine, but rather to facilitate giving a meaningful presentation.

Though it may not feel “Agile” to rehearse, your audience may be depending on you for it. If you will be presenting to a multi-vendor audience, your considerations will be different than if you will be presenting to your development team and scrum master or even just to one vendor. Whether that means rehearsing and presenting more formally or informally depends on your style and the needs of your client. One component of this preparation comes in the form of properly setting up.

For Example:

• By turning off all chat notifications and other applications that could pop up on your screen while presenting, you will reduce distractions and the potential for other mishaps.
• Additionally, by opening any browser tabs, documents, or other pages needed before the demo starts, you will create a better impression of speed and will keep your impact going.

Expect the Unexpected

Ultimately, despite all your preparation, unexpected issues, questions, or challenges may arise during your presentation. Therefore, it will pay off to proactively think through different types of issues that could occur, as well as the types of responses you would offer and the directions you would take should you find yourself in an unexpected situation. This may even include checking the next time the environment on which you will be demoing will be down for updates and patches, for example. By anticipating these potential impediments pre-demo, you can successfully schedule a demo without any issue or even react and prepare accordingly should you be unable to present any other time.

In a world that is constantly changing, put yourself at ease with one constant – your own preparation. You will notice the effects.