diff --git a/sdks/python/apache_beam/examples/snippets/transforms/elementwise/pardo_dofn_methods.py b/sdks/python/apache_beam/examples/snippets/transforms/elementwise/pardo_dofn_methods.py
index 46d4f5955b0c..8cc43fadb10c 100644
--- a/sdks/python/apache_beam/examples/snippets/transforms/elementwise/pardo_dofn_methods.py
+++ b/sdks/python/apache_beam/examples/snippets/transforms/elementwise/pardo_dofn_methods.py
@@ -37,6 +37,8 @@ def pardo_dofn_methods(test=None):
   # Portable runners do not guarantee that teardown will be executed, so we
   # use FnApiRunner instead of prism.
   runner = 'FnApiRunner'
+  # TODO(damccorm) - remove after next release
+  runner = 'DirectRunner'
   # [START pardo_dofn_methods]
   import apache_beam as beam