Whenever I deliver a major demo, people always ask: "Do you enjoy doing demos?" Yes, they can be a lot of fun, but enjoyment isn't why I do them.

The real reason I say yes is: a high-stakes demo is a great stress test for product clarity.

This past Tuesday, I had the opportunity to present the latest Agent 365 work for Microsoft's FY27 company kickoff. Agent 365, if you don't know, is how we empower customers to view, manage, and control their AI deployment and consumption. This is some of the most mission-critical, highly demanded work our customers need today.

When you're bogged down in the day-to-day grind of execution, it is incredibly easy to lose sight of what really matters. But when you have to synthesize a complex product journey for an audience, you are forced to step back and ask the hard, uncomfortable questions:

  • What does the actual, holistic user journey look like? Not just a shiny feature, but the entire end-to-end flow.
  • What is the core value proposition? If you only have a short window to showcase a capability, can you identify what actually matters to a customer today?
  • Where are the cliffs? Every product is a work in progress, and running a flow exactly how a customer would exposes the friction points, edge cases, and rough edges with ruthless clarity.

Even if you don’t have a big stage on your calendar, I highly recommend the exercise of trying to pitch your product’s core flow in a crisp, 30-second window. You’ll instantly find the gaps, but you'll also (hopefully) come away with a massive boost in product conviction.

Backstage monitors showing Miti Joshi presenting a live demo, with speaker cues and a countdown timer.