How to hold an Iteration Review?

I’ve been facilitating reviews for a few years now but I am always striving to improve. I’m a big believer in setting conditions of satisfaction for those goals, constantly measuring for success. Ambiguity is not a scrummaster’s friend.

Up to this point my developers and QA have been leading the reviews, demonstrating working software to product owners looking for acceptance of each user story that was planned for the current iteration.

These reviews have not always gone smoothly. In general, developers are notoriously introverted. If there are a dev team member or two that actually enjoy and are articulate at giving the demo, oh happy day! So this got me thinking and searching for improvement.

Keeping the purpose of the meeting in mind (Get feedback from stakeholders, customers), I explored different approaches. I came across one that I found interesting and thought I’d see if others had tried it and if they had better results.

A better way?

The suggestion was to have the product owner lead the demo of the stories to stakeholders. Of the members of a scrum team, the product owners should have the best idea of how the user stories benefits the end users. End users don’t (usually) care about how the devs refactored the code or wrote a new class. They want to see the benefit to them. That is why they asked for the change in the first place.

The product owner should possess the skill set the rely the benefit to the customer. It’s feels little like that scene in Office Space. PO’s have people skills!

Since it’s an empirical environment we work in, I am willing to give it a shot. Can’t be worse than listening to introverts ;) So tell me, have you tried this? Did it work? If not am I crazy?

Look forward to your feedback.

Peace