Decide Stage (Stage 4)

Decide Objectives — Deliberate about the ideas you came up with in Diverge stage, refine, and choose the best one or some combination of the ideas so that way you get a best possible product.

Decide Methods

Team review & decision on what to prototype

At this point, the team can discuss the best ideas and decide which ones to prototype.

“No, But…!”

Now is the time to be critical but no fighting among yourselves.

You can always say “No” but always end with a “But…”. No, we can’t do this but we can always try that.

Continue to test your assumptions to validate them.

Thinking hats

Assign everyone a Thinking Hat. Each hat represents a different point of view that’s valuable and that can enrich the final decision.

Encourage everyone to choose a perspective and discuss the decision from that point of view.

Zen Voting

After sketching, you’ll use a structured critique and weighted voting to select the best ideas from the field of possibilities.

It’s time to share the ideas on a whiteboard. Encourage sprinters to do zen voting: reviewing the ideas and voting in silence.

This allows everyone to form their own opinions before they get biased by others.

Review the ideas and vote in silence. Each person gets one vote. Use the voting dots to vote on the best ideas.

Key appointment holders will get an extra vote of a different color to get buy-in from them at an early stage. This is how, we, at Lefty Talents Group get the management team to be involved in the Sprint.

Once everyone has voted, the team decides between the most popular ideas.

Remind the participants they aren’t committing to this idea for the rest of their lives; they are just deciding which idea they want to prototype as a team for the remainder of the Sprint.