

Help My Sprint Demo has bike sheditis - Bojangly

The team goes into the demo fairly stoked.  They've worked hard and they're looking forward to showing off their wares.<p>Unfortunately things go off the rails.  People start to rhyme-off all of the what-ifs and what-if-it-could-also-do's.  Moderating the ensuing discussion can be difficult.  The team gets deflated, feeling like the work they did wasn't as valued as these shiny what ifs, and there's a sense that it's too late in the project to incorporate those anyway.<p>We're considering going "dark" except to a select few, and widening the audience for "launch", but I'm not sure how successful that will be.<p>Any suggestions?
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codeonfire
Do you have another dev team that you can demo the product for or do
reciprocal demos? It might boost morale if it is shown to people who would be
interested in the technical merit.

I've noticed that on the business side, people have sometimes made their
career through whining and complaining. They will never be satisfied because
not saying anything or being satisfied looks bad. The game is that they
complain, and you respond. If you respond then that person has displayed
control over you and your team and the person's status is enhanced. Going
skunkworks is going to cause problems if these people know about it because
they want a venue so they can play the game.

If you are going "dark" , you need to get them to forget about your team's
major focus. Start a high visibility decoy project that doesn't suck up a lot
of time. Honestly it does not matter to the game players if it is a single
page web site or complex business engine, their reaction will be the same.

In the meantime, start putting obvious ducks into your sprints for them to
complain about, then remove the duck after the demo is over.

