Facilitation Guide: Mapping Quality Together

Everything you need to confidently run the Mapping Quality Together workshop - timings, scripts, outputs, follow-ups, and accessibility tips.

This guide builds on the free quality mapping session plan and walks you through everything step by step: what to say, how to prep, how long each activity should take, and what to watch out for. If you’ve done a few workshops before, you’ll also find tips and tricks I’ve picked up over the years that might help you go a bit deeper.

It includes:

• Breakdowns of each activity with aims, outcomes, and outputs

• Prompts for what to say and how to guide discussions

• Recommended timings and things to look out for

• A pre-workshop checklist so you don’t miss anything

• Ideas for how to use the outputs after the session

• Tips on making the session accessible and inclusive

• Guidance on how to gather feedback afterwards

• This is designed to save you time and help you run a session that actually sparks meaningful insight and action.

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🧭 Facilitation Guide: Mapping Quality Together

🧩 Preparation

Workshop Goal:
To co-create a shared understanding of quality by identifying and categorising key quality attributes into five buckets, including the foundational role of people quality.

Workshop Length: 90-120 minutes
Recommended Group Size: Up to 20 participants
Format: Remote or in-person
Tools:

• Digital (Miro, Mural,) or physical whiteboard with 5 sections

• Sticky notes or digital sticky equivalents

• Timer

• Voting dots or digital voting tool (e.g. Miro reactions, Poll)

Set up your board or space with five labelled areas:

1. People Quality

2. Process Quality

3. Code Quality

4. System Quality

5. Product Quality

👉 Provide a short description of each (see section below). Include a few examples if needed.

Have this slide or poster ready at the start:

• “What does good quality look like in your context?

• Write down as many quality attributes as you can technical, procedural, interpersonal, or experiential.”

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1. Welcome & Framing (10 mins)

🎯 Aim: Set the context for the session and introduce the quality buckets.
🤞 Outcome: Everyone understands the purpose of the workshop and the different dimensions of quality.
📑 Output: Shared language and mental model for quality categories.

🎤 What to say:

• “This workshop is about surfacing what quality means to us not in abstract terms, but grounded in our product and experience.”

• “We'll explore different dimensions of quality and highlight what we already value, as well as areas to improve.”

• “We’ll also include people quality the soft skills and behaviours that help us collaborate, solve problems, and deliver quality together.”

🧠 Share the 5 Quality Buckets:

• People Quality: Curiosity, humility and empathy. The glue and grease of all other types. See What people quality attributes should we consider?

• Process Quality: Planning, reviews, testing strategies – how we work before code is written. See Process quality

• Code Quality: Clarity, maintainability, readability, well-factored code - enables velocity. See Code quality

• System Quality: Integration, reliability, scalability, observability - quality of the software system as a whole. See System quality

• Product Quality: What end-users experience: utility, usability, performance, design quality. See Product quality

⚠️ Watch for: People defaulting to code or product attributes only and gently prompt broader thinking (e.g. “What about how we work together?”)

📚 Learn more: See Quality Engineering Newsletter write up of the 4 categories from google. Also see What people quality attributes should we consider?