Yes, we’re hiring! ▸ Human interfacing is my favorite thing ▸ Testing is also my favorite thing ▸ Two cats—Dante and Dax ▸ Ask me for a sticker later! ▸ Yes, they’re also my favorite things ▸ My pronouns are she/her
▸ Two types of risk assessment sessions ▸ Five steps to a well run session ▸ Pick your features ▸ Choose a rating system ▸ Level-set your system ▸ Assign values ▸ Re-evaluate ▸ Applying this to informal sessions
walk through the risks of an application, feature, use case, or other subset of your life ▸ Describe the risks that face your project ▸ Decide on their impact and probability ▸ Create cohesion between groups or between yourself and reality ▸ Formal or informal?
whole-team event ▸ Level set risk with the team and determine what is acceptable ▸ Creates cohesion within your team ▸ Lets everyone feel heard ▸ Run at regular intervals. Generally less often than grooming, but find a cadence.
single person event ▸ Back-of-the-napkin ▸ Use these kinds of sessions to level set yourself ▸ Judge your growth as a tester ▸ More on this later! ▸ Foreshadowing
RISK ▸ Quickly talk about impact and probability of failure ▸ Include any additional considerations you need to have a full picture ▸ Set a goal for the meeting ▸ Time box this to 5-10 minutes
YOUR FEATURES ▸ Expect to get through about 6 features in an hour ▸ This depends on how chatty your team is ▸ It’s okay not to get through everything! ▸ Look for logical groupings ▸ Consider personas ▸ Handle this before the session! ▸ Make a collaborative document
A RATING SYSTEM ▸ How do you want to represent your concerns? ▸ 1-10 ▸ T-shirt sizing (extra large, large, medium, small, extra small) ▸ High/Medium/Low ▸ Emojis ▸ Images
A RATING SYSTEM ▸ How do you want to represent your concerns? ▸ 1-10 ▸ T-shirt sizing (extra large, large, medium, small, extra small) ▸ High/Medium/Low ▸ Emojis ▸ Images ▸ Time box this to about 5 minutes
YOUR SYSTEM ▸ A system that’s not calibrated is just chaos ▸ A system that is calibrated is organized chaos ▸ Start by asking what the lowest part of your rating looks like ▸ Move on to the highest part ▸ Use these two as bookends for your system ▸ Expect contention! ▸ Time box this to about 10 minutes ▸ You must time box this or it will take the entire session ▸ You can re-use the system and calibration for other sessions with the same group
VALUES ▸ Vote with fingers, cards, an app, anything ▸ The important thing is to make sure everyone’s voice is heard ▸ The first vote takes the temperature of the room and leads into discussion ▸ Discussion fills in the gaps ▸ A second vote is usually more confident, if it’s needed ▸ If the second vote is still conflicted, table the issue and revisit when you have more information ▸ Time box each issue to 5-7 minutes.
▸ Check if ▸ …your rating system is working for your team ▸ …your ‘book ends’ are still correct. Has something else come up that’s more impactful? ▸ …everyone’s voice is heard ▸ Your rating system should be a living thing that evolves as your team changes
combine them ▸ This can be done outside the meeting ▸ This gives you a good picture of where you should focus your efforts ▸ You will have a picture of risk in context with all the features you’ve been talking about
rigid ▸ Look at the work you’ve got ▸ Jot down your gut feeling on risk/impact/probability ▸ Use this to rank items and focus your attention ▸ Is it what you expected? ▸ Do you need more clarification? ▸ Do you feel good about your plan?
rolls out, revisit your risk matrix ▸ Were your instincts right? ▸ Did you miss something? ▸ Did you need to re-evaluate anything? ▸ Did you contribute to the success of the project? ▸ Congrats! You’re calibrating your gut instinct
risk? ▸ Two types of risk assessment sessions ▸ Five steps to a well run session ▸ Pick your features ▸ Choose a rating system ▸ Level-set your system ▸ Assign values ▸ Re-evaluate ▸ Applying this to informal sessions
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