Team decision making toolbox

This post is part of 101 ideas for agile teams.

Context

Your team makes a lot of decisions: what tool to use, how to do something, what to present in the review, how does what and many many more.

There are big things to decide and small things to decide.

Your team needs a lot of time to decide — even small things — because they don’t have an agreement on how to decide.

Action

Introduce a team decision making toolbox. A collection of decision making methods paired with scenarios where they make sense for your team.

For example, the toolbox may contain the method Consent that should be used for decisions that affect the whole team (way of working, processes, methods, tools). For small decisions, an individual may decide and inform the rest of the team of the decision.

Note that decision making methods can be combined. For example, you can specify that you first make a roman vote. If a lot of team members disagree (thumbs down), then you switch to a consultative decision by a single person (see below)

What you gain

Every team member is confident to decide and knows who to involve and how to make the decision.

The result will be faster, cheaper and better decisions.

How to strengthen

Review your decisions during the Sprint in the retrospective. What was decided? How was it decided? Does the team see improvements? Adapt the decision making toolbox accordingly.

Risks

This is an idea to reduce risks, so hopefully no risks involved ;-)

Decision making methods I like

Consent
Improve the proposal until nobody objects (everybody can live with the decision)

• needs preparation
• results in good acceptance of the decision

Roman vote
Agree/go along/disagree and wish to speak shown with thumb

• quick and easy
• works only if all participants are well informed
• works only on decisions that are not too complex

Consultative decision by a single person (german explanation)
A single elected person decides after consultation with affected persons

• works for complex decisions
• efficient for complex decisions

Decide and inform
If you need to make a decision, make it yourself (or in a small group) and inform all affected persons

• works for decisions with limited impact (not a big change, can be reversed if needed), e.g. code design decisions
• fast

There are a lot more ways to make a team decision, find the ones matching your team’s needs best.

Please help me improve this idea by providing feedback.

More ideas at 101 ideas for agile teams

Many thanks to bbv Software Services for making this blog post possible.