We meet twice a year — ideally face-to-face — to discuss the Radar.
At the meeting, the members of the TAB spend several hours debating the nominated blips for the Radar. Our main aim during the meeting is to decide which blips to include, which rings they fall into and what we should say about them.
We begin by putting candidate blips up on the wall, each placed in their suggested quadrant and ring. Often different people suggest the same blips, sometimes in different rings. Once we have the candidates up on the board, we go through the long process of evaluating each blip. We take each blip one at a time and discuss whether we think it ought to be on the Radar, and if so, where. This discussion is always enjoyable — there are lots of opinions and experiences around the room, but there's also a friendliness and mutual respect that makes the arguments much less grating than these kinds of discussions sometimes become.
Note: Be sure to check out podcasts on how we build the Radar remotely and in-person.
Once blips are chosen and placed, we need to write the descriptions. Each blip gets one champion who is responsible for writing it up, which typically happens after the meeting. The TAB has a product owner who has the unenviable job of chasing us to get our blips written up. Once written, they kick off an internal feedback process across Thoughtworks and work with various region representatives to begin translations. All the while, a designer works on the graphic and PDF.