Everything looked fine until the day before launch.
Then we tried something small that changed everything.
The Friday evening match wasn’t supposed to be intense. Just a pre-season friendly between two local youth teams. But the players were charging, yelling, and passing like it was the finals. The Project Manager watching from the sidelines turned to the coach and asked,
“Why so serious? The match score doesn’t even count, right?”
That one sentence stuck with her. Monday morning, she was scanning the sprint retro notes. “Final demo went well, but nine issues were found on the last day again. Testing started too late.” She muttered, “Then what were we doing all week?”
By afternoon, she called for a sync. “We need to talk about how we’re running our sprints,” she began. “We’re not delivering late because we’re under-skilled. We’re late because our issues show up too close to demo day.”
A developer chimed in, “We’re closing tickets. Jira says we’re green.”
The QA responded, “Green tickets, yes. But I only get working builds in the last 48 hours. That’s when all the problems show up.” The PM nodded. “Exactly. We’re doing ‘just enough’ every day until pressure hits. And when it hits, we’re out of time.” “So… what’s the plan?” someone asked. “We introduce mid-sprint internal demos,” she said. “No mockups. Just working code. Whatever’s ready, we show. Even if it’s broken.” “Mid-sprint feels too early,” a senior developer hesitated. “It’s not about perfect delivery,” the PM clarified. “It’s about finding the cracks before they reach the customer. Think of it like a friendly match. You want things to break here, not on game day.” The first internal demo was rough. Buttons didn’t respond. Charts crashed. The team laughed awkwardly. But no one defended their code.
In fact, someone said, “Glad we caught this now. Would’ve been chaos on Friday.” Things started shifting. A developer dropped a message in chat: “Pushed the new flow. Anyone want to try and break it?” QA began test planning before the sprint even started. One engineer remarked, “We’re catching bugs before I even merge. This feels… new.” Things started shifting. A developer dropped a message in chat: “Pushed the new flow. Anyone want to try and break it?”
QA began test planning before the sprint even started.
One engineer remarked, “We’re catching bugs before I even merge. This feels… new.”
During the next customer call, the PM shared progress.
“This is what we had working by mid-sprint. We’re now fixing edge cases and running regression.”
The customer product owner leaned back and smiled. “Feels a lot more stable than previous sprints. Did something change?”
“We’re doing internal demos,” she said. “It’s forcing us to test our assumptions earlier.”
Three sprints later, the customer’s CTO joined the demo. He stayed quiet through the walkthrough, then said,
“I just want to appreciate what’s happening here. This release is tight, clean, and consistent. Whatever you’ve changed, keep doing it.”
And that’s when the team knew the shift had worked.
The result? Without adding people. Without staying late. The team started releasing 15% faster, with fewer surprises and more trust. The customer noticed. And they said it, out loud. “Feels like we’re finally ahead of things. Appreciate the discipline. You’ve made our lives easier.”
15%
Mid-sprint demos sound simple, but the discipline makes the difference. If you’re an Industry 4.0 company struggling with delivery speed, Email us at info@wonderbiz.in
Key Takeaway
We stopped finding issues at the finish line by adding mid-sprint internal demos.
They surfaced problems early, when fixing them was still easy and momentum never broke.
