Consequence Scanning
What is it?#
Consequence scanning is an agile practice that helps organisations consider potential consequences that their products or services can have on people, communities or the planet.
It helps ensure that products and services are aligned with the organisations values and culture by asking three questions.
It can be run during different stages of development and works best during feature inception and when a feature is introduced so that we can ensure we are still delivering on the original intent.
Sessions last between 45 minutes and 1 hour. The more the sessions are run the faster they become.
It was originally created by doteveryone.
What questions do we ask?#
1 What are the intended and unintended consequences of this product, service or feature?#
This helps us to identify and consider the potential consequences of an action, unintended, positive and negative.
Intended consequences are the change or impact that we are trying to make. Most likely they will be the project requirements but we need to try and reframe them in terms of impact on the world as well as the organisation.
Unintended consequences are what could happen as a result of our actions. How can what we are making be used in unintended ways, or does something we intend to do have a resulting effect that we may not be aware of.
What positive consequences are most important?#
Not all consequences are of equal importance, we need to maximise effect of the positive consequences be they intended or otherwise.
What consequence need mitigating?#
Identify consequences that we can mitigate, they could be affecting our organisation, our users, or the communities we work with. Remember, that not everything we create may be be good for everyone.
When can we do consequence scanning?#
We can carry out consequence scanning at any time during our work on a project, however it works best at the initial conception of the idea and when new features are introduced.
Who should take part?#
Like with many activities this can and should change based on your situation, team and client organisation. We would however recommend that you invite the following:
Members of the delivery team#
People involved in making the thing will have a great understanding of the product or service and how this could affect it. Think about inviting delivery leads, developers and user experience people.
People who advocate for users#
This could be user researchers, user experience people, perhaps the client even has some real life users that we could invite to the session?
Technology specialists#
We may need to use a specific API, some technology or infrastructure. Its important we know how the product or service may be affects by these decisions and their inherent constraints.
Business specialists#
This could be someone from a different part of the organisation that does a similar thing as a manual process, or understands the core of what we are trying to do from a different perspective.
Product owners and stakeholders#
Make sure you have people who can make decisions that stick. Get people involved who are working on similiar streams of work, or whose products and services will be effected by this work.
Recommended structure of the session#
Part 1 Ideation#
Introduction - explain the focus of the session and post up intended consequences.
Quiet time - ask the first question and have some quiet time to answer based on their knowledge and experience. It should be independent to help remove seniority barriers and encourage contribution.
Affinity sorting - group similar ideas together
Quiet time - another opportunity to add new consequences based on what others have added. This allows us to react to the new ideas and push beyond our initial assumptions.
Part 2 Action#
Action sorting - put the consequences into action categories: act, influence or monitor. This helps us think about what consequences are within our ability to act on.
Dot voting - ask questions 2 and 3, then get everyone to vote
Discussion - what do the consequences mean for our service or product? Are there any quick wins? Can we assign someone as responsible for the next step? Focus on the act and influence sections and think about how we can make these consequences more positive than negative.