Ritual Basics
Welcome to the “Ritual Basics” section of this reference guide. Understanding the foundational elements and key terms of the Ritual app is essential for maximizing its features and benefits. Whether you’re a first-time user or need a refresher, this section provides succinct definitions and explanations for various concepts and terminologies within the app. Dive in to get a solid grasp of the building blocks that make Ritual a unique and powerful tool for your needs.
Projects and Explorations
What is the purpose of a project workspace?
A project workspace houses one or more related explorations. This allows a large problem space to be broken down into more manageable components. Each exploration can operate on its own timeline and include distinct collaborators, while living under a project container.
How do explorations work within a project?
Think of a project workspace as a house for a “big rock” which can be broken down into “smaller rocks”. Because there may be several meaningful problems to solve, a project workspace can contain several explorations. Each exploration comes to life in a dedicated space where the discovery to recommendation workflow takes place.
Artifacts and Templates
What artifacts can Ritual generate across the product lifecycle?
Ritual can generate a wide range of product-lifecycle artifacts, including strategic narratives, product briefs (intake), PRDs for different audiences, and technical specifications.
How are templates for artifacts handled in the system?
We offer a range of common templates for artifacts across the product lifecycle. The purpose of selecting a template is to provide context for the exploration as well as to render final content into a format that is shelf ready for the users.
Can templates be tailored?
Yes, the easiest way is to select an existing one and modify the sections and sub sections. The modified template would be saved in the system for future use.
Why is an artifact connected at the project level?
This allows multiple explorations to be run and completed so that an artifact covers the full scope of what’s needed.
Standard and Discovery Questions
How is a standard question list handled in the system?
Enterprises often use standard question lists at different stages of the product lifecycle. Ritual supports uploading these lists and associating them with any template. More importantly, the system elevates them—integrating their intent into the discovery questions Ritual suggests—so they influence how explorations are framed and what collaborators focus on.
How do discovery questions in the system relate to standard questions?
Discovery questions follow the aperture of the problem statement. They are intended to cover the breadth and depth of the defined problem. They will also incorporate any standard questions which fit this aperture, after transforming them contextually.
Workflows
What is the purpose of crafting a problem statement?
A clear problem statement makes each exploration focused and leads to explainable recommendations. When you provide raw input, Ritual analyzes it, surfaces “attack vectors” as considerations, and lets you refine them for precision and altitude. From there, Ritual generates a structured problem statement with objectives and constraints.
How does collaboration work for discovery questions?
After developing a problem statement, Ritual produces suggested discovery questions which the admin can interact with. The admin can open up the discovery questions for “sourcing” where collaborators can suggest more or the admin can move right to assigning questions.
What capabilities are supported to help a user answer questions?
Ritual’s answer engine is a framework that is custom to each question. It’s meant to help users overcome cold starts. It starts by providing a range of considerations that represent building blocks. For each consideration, the tool asks clarifying questions which help the user extract relevant thought.
What can be done with recommendations?
When an exploration is complete, Ritual drafts actionable recommendations. Recommendations are organized by category and there are often multiple recommendations by category. Recommendations can be shared and comments can be used to regenerate them.
How do recommendations vary based on types of artifacts?
Recommendations take shape from the stage of the product lifecycle you’re focused on. The selection of an artifact provides Ritual with this context. For example, if the artifact is a PRD, Ritual generates recommendations in the form of stories / epics.
Other
What is the role of the admin compared to a collaborator?
Anyone who initiates an exploration is its admin and can add others to this role. Admins have the ability to move the exploration across states and add collaborators, amongst other functionality. Collaborators can suggest questions, answer them, view what’s happening in the exploration and participate in the recommendations process.
What integrations exist to action recommendations?
We generate JIRA ready outputs such as tickets and can support integrations into project management systems (Asana, Monday, Atlassian suite).
Are any aspects of the prototype still under development?
Yes. Currently, artifacts operate at the exploration level. This means each exploration produces its own artifacts. We are modifying template libraries for artifacts to live at the project level. In addition, we are doing a release next week to support adding standard questions to templates. The remainder of what’s in the prototype is available in the product for any user today.