Small Quality Hack – Getting Started

Do I get enough value from RiskStormingOnline after 45 minutes?

Not sure RiskStormingOnline is for you? You watched the videos, read the posts, maybe even participated in a workshop already, but all the information and moderation seems daunting?

I know the feeling. Every workshop, I doubt myself. Do I know the context well enough? Will people find it interesting and participate? Will everyone speak up, or not speak over everyone else? Will it be valuable?
These are very true and real worries. I understand you. Therefor, I suggest you run a quick proof of concept:

This method introduces RiskStormingOnline to your team

• 45 minute Proof of Concept
• No money-transfer
• No sign-up
• Nobody is storing your data except your own browser
• No expert knowledge

A Cure for Doubts

Nothing cures doubt than setting yourself up for a Win. Stand up, take on a power-pose, take a deep breath in front of an open window and thump your chest like you’re auditioning for the next King-Kong movie. Yell at the top of your lungs, if you feel like it. OOOOoooOOOOoooOOOOh! … wait, that’s Tarzan?

There, that should get you into a can-do mood. What’s next?
Follow these easy steps, of course:

1. Make it easy on yourself
2. Set the context
3. Do Phase 1
4. Do Phase 2
5. Thumbs Up/Down

Make It Easy On Yourself

Start with a group of people you feel safe with. Your own development team, perhaps? People who know you, who you’ve been working with and who you’ve experimented with. This should already be a place where it is safe to fail and where failing means learning.

Make sure you’re on the same page: this is an experiment. It’s a short try-out to see if you would do more or this.

Set The Context

Introduce the product:
this can be a feature you’ll be building soon, or have been building already. This can be your whole product or maybe even a fun product such as: your competitor’s product, the Flappybird app, a popular app such as Instagram or a shopping cart for Amazon.

Set a time:
Offer 15 minutes for Phase 1, 20 minutes for Phase 2 and some time to wrap up. You should be done within 1 hour.

Do Phase 1

Goal: get consensus on the 6 most important Quality Aspects on the Left-hand side.

1. Open op https://app.riskstormingonline.com/phase1 share this screen in your zoom/hangout/teams/…
2. Put a timer on 15 minutes and start.
3. Let the participants explore the cards by showing them on your screen.
4. Your job is to drag and drop blue cards from Right to Left, until you have 6. Then drag-and-drop cards as the discussion goes on.

A nice wrap up for this phase is to explain how the diversity of the group offers a much better insight into what the product quality actually embodies. If only one person would do this, it’d be very biased. A thought experiment could be to think about how the session would be different if you’d invite: someone from marketing, sales, a user, a customer,…

Do Phase 2

Goal: For each chosen Quality Aspect, describe 1 or 2 Risks

1. Once you’ve got your 6 Quality Aspect cards chosen, move to the next phase: https://app.riskstormingonline.com/phase2
2. Put a timer on 20 minutes
3. Move your cursor to the first risk input box on the right hand side
4. Ask the participants “What is the biggest risk you can imagine for the first Quality Aspect”?
5. Type in their suggestions, moderate, paraphrase, combine risks as needed. You’re in this together, ask help from the team if summarising is challenging.
6. Move on to the next risk, the next Quality Aspect until you have 2 risks per Quality Aspect or until the time is up.

Wrapping up this Phase is stating that you now have explored what Quality of this product means to this team AND the different risk that could threaten this quality. This is now shared information. Information worth to act upon. It’s a baseline for your future decisions and journey.

Thumbs Up/Down

Get the participants on screen and ask them to each show a thumb: Up if they liked it and thought it was valuable and want to do more. Down if they wished for their 45 minutes back.

1. Stop sharing your screen.
2. Count to three
3. Count the Up’s vs. the downs.
4. Optional: have a discussion.