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Hopes & Fears

Create empathy and shared excitement for new initiatives

Hopes and Fears is a team alignment tool built specifically for remote teams to create empathy and shared excitement for new initiatives. It takes the tension and uncertainty out of a project launch by putting all concerns and aspirations out in the open right from the start, making it easy for distributed teams to participate asynchronously and then come together for live discussion.Participants can choose to join with their real name or remain completely anonymous - whatever feels most comfortable for honest, open feedback.

Understanding Hopes and Fears

Hopes

What outcomes are team members excited about? What success looks like for this initiative? This could include user adoption goals, business metrics, technical achievements, or personal growth opportunities from working on this initiative.

Fears

Potential risks and challenges the team wants to avoid. This might include technical debt, user experience issues, market timing concerns, resource constraints, or lessons learned from previous product launches.


How It Works

Learn how to use Hopes and Fears in your organization to jump-start and supercharge new initiatives with your team through collaborative sessions.

1

Create & Collect

Create a new Hopes & Fears session and share the participant link with your team to collect their hopes and fears regarding a new initiative (we recommend giving them at least 1 day to submit).

2

Present & Discuss

Once complete, book a time to present the teams hopes and fears and discuss. Your team simply can join using the same link to view the live presentation. Team members can upvote and comment in real-time (we recommend using a video call).

3

Review & Export

Review and download the results. High-voted hopes become success criteria, top fears become risk mitigation priorities

Live Presentation Demo

This is how participants see each submission during the facilitated discussion. During real sessions, participants can vote and comment in real-time while the facilitator presents each submission.

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Benefits of Using Hopes & Fears

How Does This Help?

Aligns product vision

When you see your product concerns echoed by other team members, it builds shared understanding

Enables proactive planning

Identifying potential product risks early allows teams to build mitigation into the roadmap

Drives motivation

Hearing everyone's product ambitions and user impact goals can be very energizing

Improves collaboration

Understanding what product outcomes matter to each team member enhances cross-functional work

Who Benefits from Hopes and Fears?

This team alignment exercise is especially valuable for remote and distributed teams about to begin a new product initiative, project, quarter, sprint, or collaborative process. The tool enables asynchronous participation across time zones, then brings everyone together for live discussion. For maximum impact, involve every team member when possible.

Tips for Participants

  • Be honest and specific about your product hopes and concerns
  • Consider user impact, business goals, and technical feasibility
  • Think about lessons learned from previous product launches
  • Vote and comment thoughtfully during the presentation
  • Remember: this is about product alignment, not judgment