Show Working Product

The best way to show progress is to see the working product. That’s because your customers buy and use features. They don’t buy architectural progress or UI progress or any other kind of progress. They buy features and feature sets. If the team shows them finished features, the team and the managers/sponsors/customers build trust with each other.

Back in ​Create a Walking Skeleton​, I suggested the product owner define and the team implement small vertical slices that help people see the minimum skeleton of the product. As the product owner decides what’s most important in the remainder of that feature set, the team implements it.

That process—implement small vertical slices around the product so people can see the intent—helps the managers (or sponsors or customers) see the team’s progress. The more these people can see progress, the easier it is for them to understand and trust that the project is progressing well.

You might want to use the ideas described in ​Demonstrations Show Progress and Value​, for management/sponsor/customer demonstrations. When demonstrating to people outside the team, consider showing a “day in the life” of a customer. Consider using the scenarios that you defined for different users back in ​Write Small Stories​. Use the ideas in impact mapping or user story mapping to help define those scenarios. Then, demo by scenario.