six-thinking-hats

The Six Hats

| Hat | Focus | Key Question |

|-----|-------|--------------|

| 🤍 White | Facts & Data | What do we KNOW? |

| ❤️ Red | Emotions | What do we FEEL? |

| 🖤 Black | Risks | What could go WRONG? |

| 💛 Yellow | Benefits | What's GOOD? |

| 💚 Green | Creativity | What ELSE could we try? |

| 🔵 Blue | Process | What should we DO? |

When to Use Each Hat

| Hat | Use For |

|-----|---------|

| 🤍 White | Baseline metrics, test data inventory |

| ❤️ Red | Team confidence check, quality gut feel |

| 🖤 Black | Risk assessment, gap analysis, pre-mortems |

| 💛 Yellow | Strengths audit, quick win identification |

| 💚 Green | Test innovation, new approaches, brainstorming |

| 🔵 Blue | Strategy planning, retrospectives, decision-making |

---

🤍 White Hat - Facts & Data

Output: Quantitative testing baseline

Questions:

• What test coverage do we have?
• What is our pass/fail rate?
• What environments exist?
• What is our defect history?

```

Example Output:

Coverage: 67% line, 45% branch

Test Suite: 1,247 unit, 156 integration, 23 E2E

Execution Time: Unit 3min, Integration 12min, E2E 45min

Defects: 23 open (5 critical, 8 major, 10 minor)

```

🖤 Black Hat - Risks & Cautions

Output: Comprehensive risk assessment

Questions:

• What could go wrong in production?
• What are we NOT testing?
• What assumptions might be wrong?
• Where are the coverage gaps?

```

HIGH RISKS:

• No load testing (production outage risk)
• Auth edge cases untested (security vulnerability)
• Database failover never tested (data loss risk)

```

💛 Yellow Hat - Benefits & Optimism

Output: Strengths and opportunities

Questions:

• What's working well?
• What strengths can we leverage?
• What quick wins are available?

```

STRENGTHS:

• Strong CI/CD pipeline
• Team expertise in automation
• Stakeholders value quality

QUICK WINS:

• Add smoke tests (reduce incidents)
• Automate manual regression (save 2 days/release)

```

💚 Green Hat - Creativity

Output: Innovative testing ideas

Questions:

• How else could we test this?
• What if we tried something completely different?
• What emerging techniques could we adopt?

```

IDEAS:

1. AI-powered test generation
2. Chaos engineering for resilience
3. Property-based testing for edge cases
4. Production traffic replay
5. Synthetic monitoring

```

❤️ Red Hat - Emotions

Output: Team gut feelings (NO justification needed)

Questions:

• How confident do you feel about quality?
• What makes you anxious?
• What gives you confidence?

```

FEELINGS:

• Confident: Unit tests, API tests
• Anxious: Authentication flow, payment processing
• Frustrated: Flaky tests, slow E2E suite

```

🔵 Blue Hat - Process

Output: Action plan with owners and timelines

Questions:

• What's our strategy?
• How should we prioritize?
• What's the next step?

```

PRIORITIZED ACTIONS:

1. [Critical] Address security testing gap - Owner: Alice
2. [High] Implement contract testing - Owner: Bob
3. [Medium] Reduce flaky tests - Owner: Carol

```

---

Solo Session (30 min)

```markdown

# Six Hats Analysis: [Topic]

Facts: [list metrics, data]

Feelings: [gut reactions, no justification]

Risks: [what could go wrong]

Strengths: [what works, opportunities]

Ideas: [creative alternatives]

Actions: [prioritized next steps]

```

Team Session (60 min)

• Each hat: 10 minutes
• Rotate through hats as group
• Document on shared whiteboard
• Blue Hat synthesizes at end

---

```typescript

// Risk-focused analysis (Black Hat)

const risks = await Task("Identify Risks", {

scope: 'payment-module',

perspective: 'black-hat',

includeMitigation: true

}, "qe-regression-risk-analyzer");

// Creative test approaches (Green Hat)

const ideas = await Task("Generate Test Ideas", {

feature: 'new-auth-system',

perspective: 'green-hat',

includeEmergingTechniques: true

}, "qe-test-generator");

// Comprehensive analysis (All Hats)

const analysis = await Task("Six Hats Analysis", {

topic: 'Q1 Test Strategy',

hats: ['white', 'black', 'yellow', 'green', 'red', 'blue']

}, "qe-quality-analyzer");

```

---

Memory Namespace

```

aqe/six-hats/

├── analyses/* - Complete hat analyses

├── risks/* - Black hat findings

├── opportunities/* - Yellow hat findings

└── innovations/* - Green hat ideas

```

Fleet Coordination

```typescript

const analysisFleet = await FleetManager.coordinate({

strategy: 'six-hats-analysis',

agents: [

'qe-quality-analyzer', // White + Blue hats

'qe-regression-risk-analyzer', // Black hat

'qe-test-generator' // Green hat

],

topology: 'parallel'

});

```

---

• [risk-based-testing](../risk-based-testing/) - Black Hat deep dive
• [exploratory-testing-advanced](../exploratory-testing-advanced/) - Green Hat exploration
• [context-driven-testing](../context-driven-testing/) - Adapt to context

---

| ❌ Avoid | Why | ✅ Instead |

|----------|-----|-----------|

| Mixing hats | Confuses thinking | One hat at a time |

| Justifying Red Hat | Kills intuition | State feelings only |

| Skipping hats | Misses insights | Use all six |

| Rushing | Shallow analysis | 5 min minimum per hat |

---

Separate thinking modes for clarity. Each hat reveals different insights. Red Hat intuition often catches what Black Hat analysis misses.

Everyone wears all hats. This is parallel thinking, not role-based. The goal is comprehensive analysis, not debate.