Communicating Progress

Shipping is the ultimate measure of progress, but it's also important to clearly communicate progress in other ways and give early opportunities for feedback.

You might be killing it, but a client that doesn't understand your progress is not a happy client.

Demos

One of the best ways to both show progress and simultaneously create opportunity for feedback is with a demo. A great way to make someone feel like they are listened to is to actually incorporate some of their feedback.

Remember, you're not just showing the end product, this is also an opportunity to have a conversation and communicate to them the work that you've done to arrive here — you've made your best effort to balance decisions on design and technical complexity. Inevitably someone will say "why don't you just..." and it will be one of the options that you considered. Your graceful response will help them understand that you've considered the impact of different options before you arrived here and you should be trusted.

Sometimes someone will suggest something that you really didn't think of — this is a great opportunity to show that you respect them and value their feedback.

When to Demo

You don't need to wait for a feature to be complete before showing it. The earlier you can show it, the more likely you can incorporate new ideas and prevent going down the wrong path too long, avoiding re-work.

Demo frequently, ideally every iteration. But not every demo needs to be a big show. You can demo to teammates or to the product owner at a different cadence (and earlier) than a bigger group.

However you demo, ensure that you're getting feedback from a variety of perspectives. Sponsors, users, business stakeholders, and IT staff will all have different views on what you're showing.

Preparation

You should meet with your team to decide what to show, and also importantly, what not to show.

Write a demo script and prepare data so that you have user accounts ready to show different scenarios. Use realistic data. Fake or humourous data distracts and gets in the way of people understanding how the system will affect them and can make you look unprofessional.

Decide who will demo and who will take notes.

Screenshots, Videos

You don't have to have everyone in a room or call to demo something. You can drop screenshots on Teams or prepare a video that walks through a new feature to increase the audience and allow them to participate on their own schedule.