Keeping the grownups in the loop!
The show and tell meeting is used to give feedback to the stakeholders and the team on the progress of the project at the end of each iteration. Typically when planning out each iteration I like to have a regular time slot in each one for what I consider to be the key three meetings. These are:
- Show and tell
- Iteration planning (can be combined with Show and Tell)
- Retrospective.
The show and tell will naturally be at the end of the iteration together with the retrospective. The show and tell allows the product owners to demonstrate the user stories completed in the iteration to the stakeholders and subject matter experts and also to talk around other user stories that it is not so easy to demonstrate. Typically this may elicit some additional feedback that provides the need for an additional user story or two. This meeting can be combined with the iteration planning meeting to determine the next user stories to be developed or kept separate.
A typical agenda for a show and tell will include:
- Overview – How many points were planned to be completed in the iteration and how many were achieved.
- User stories not completed in the iteration and agreement regarding next steps for those user stories.
- For each user story completed:
- Demonstration of the user story (either through the application or a description of the functionality and some evidence)
- Agreement from the Stakeholders that the user story does what they expect or creation of a new user story to make any required adjustments.
- Decision regarding deployment of the code to live and agreement to continue the project.