[SoftTalker]

The point is, that if you demo something and it's perfect, someone in the room is more than likely going to opine about a way it could be even better. Likely not another dev, but a product or biz person. Even if you deflect by saying "that wasn't in the story, but we'll add it to the backlog" that still takes time and unnecessary discussion.

If you leave or introduce some trivially fixable but noticable flaw in the demo, that will (hopefully) get noticed and everyone can feel that they are doing their jobs without needing to make up something.

[digisign]

Software is never perfect though, especially for an agile product. The reason agile the method is chosen is because they are exploring the space.

But you do touch on a real phenomenon, the Iceberg secret. The solution of which is typically to do mockups with wireframing software:

https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2002/02/13/the-iceberg-secret...

[sgerenser]

“That looks great. Just one thing – get rid of the duck.“