Designing and implementing software from scratch is not easy. Yes, you have the freedom to design at will, but you have to take many important decisions that you will not able to (easily) change afterwards. The responsibility is huge.
On the one hand, stakeholders no matter if they have a business or technical background, wish to see/touch/feel the developing product as soon as possible, in order to review/evaluate/provide feedback or just because it suits their personal/political agenda.
On the other hand, the development team has a natural temptation to show the progress of the software and make sure that every new feature gets visibility.
Demo/preview meetings are absolutely necessary and can provide extremely valuable feedback. Nevertheless, you need to be extremely cautious with when, how often and whom you organize them.
- Too early may not fulfill the expectations (no matter if you had clearly formulated them in advance), since many MVP features might be missing
- Too late may waste the chance for right-timed feedback
- Too often may cause fatigue since the delta between the versions does not justify it
- Too many or not the right people almost always results in wasted time or effort
Never forget that there are always a lot of politics around a new product in development. As a CTO/Product Manager/Product Owner to make sure that your development team can receive much needed feedback, but stay focused, without any counter-productive external noise.
