Templates · Team & mood

Hopes and Fears

Before the work starts, the team says what it wants the project to become and what could go wrong.

What it is

Two columns that look forward. Hopes collects what the team wants this project or cycle to become. Fears collects what could go wrong, said out loud while it is still cheap to act on. There is nothing to review yet: the board is about expectations.

Goal

Expectations that were private become shared. The team sees where its hopes agree and where they pull apart, and each fear that several people hold has an answer or an owner before the work starts.

When to use it

At a beginning: the kickoff of a project, the first sprint of a new team, a new quarter, the eve of a migration or a reorganisation. It works with people who do not know each other yet, since nobody has to criticise anything that happened.

When to pick another format

Midway through the work the team has facts, and a format that looks back serves it better: Sailboat keeps the destination and the risks and adds what pushes the team and what holds it back. When the fears deserve a session of their own, run a Pre-mortem. When the risks must be followed afterwards with their assumptions and dependencies, use a RAID Log.

How to run it

1. Hopes. Ask: if this goes well, what will be true at the end? One hope per card, concrete enough that you could tell later whether it happened.
2. Fears. Ask: what could make this go wrong? One fear per card. A fear is not an accusation, and none is too small to write.

Group each column. In Hopes, look for groups that pull against each other, such as speed against polish, and settle which comes first. In Fears, vote for the ones most worth acting on. For each of the top fears, agree on what would prevent it, or on the sign that it is starting, and record that as an action item with an owner. Come back to both columns at the first retrospective of the project.

Columns

To start a retrospective from this template, see Create a retro.