Working in an agile team the days before a sprint demo is an intense experience. Everyone is extra focused. Test cases are run to find bugs. The last loose ends are tied up to make sure the entire sprint is finished. To me, a sprint demo is not only a way to show the progress of the project to the stakeholders, it is also a major success factor of the project itself.
Project plan
First week results
When a project is first started a plan is made (this is an agile project, but there should still be a plan). There are five major feature areas that are to be developed in parallel. The team starts happily developing, writing code in an exploratory way while learning the business domain and the technologies involved in the solution.
After a week, work has been started on four of the areas. So far everything is looking great. One of the features is obviously easier to implement that the others, but work has at least commenced on four of the five areas.
