Decision Poker

Subject

Leadership

Participants

Agile Coach/ Agile Master / Stakeholders / Managers / the whole Agile Team

Facilitator

Agile Coach / Agile Master

Unknown author, licensed under CC BY-SA

Summary

With the method "Decision Poker" managers and teams can decide on the method how decisions are taken.

Definition

The card game "Decision Poker" by Kurswechsel helps teams to understand what different ways of decision making exist, what their strengths and weaknesses are. Then, for a given situation the team decides what way of decision making is suited best - the decision for a condidered question itself is not part of the game.

Motivation

In our complex and fast-paced world it is important that teams themselves can take proper decision in the best reasonable speed: as fast as possible and at the same time as diligently as necessary.

Results

An agreed and committed way of decision making to use in a specific situation.

Benefit

"Decision Poker" lets the team collectively learn about different decision making techniques and conciously decide on which way of decision making might be the best in a given situation.
It may encourage the team or a single team member to take desicisons and though responsability instead of just following a 'higher power'.

Procedure

In the beginning, each participant gets a set of decision poker cards. Then, the facilitator explains the seven different ways of decision making:

• Majority Vote
• Arbitrary individual decision
• Top-down decision
• Conensus
• Objection integration
• Query resistance
• Commissioned case decision

After answering any open questions, the game can start. All participants can bring their own specific situations which are written down and ordered. For each single situation those steps are taken:

1. The faciltator or participant who raised the question explains the situation
2. Questions regarding the situation are clarified
3. All participants secretly chose the card that fits their preferred way of decision taking and puts it covered on the desk
4. Only after all participants have chosen their cards, the cards will be flipped around simultaneously
5. The facilitator helps to discuss the differences as well as similarities in the cards chosen
6. If rules for future decision making situations in the team can be extracted, then this is defined and documented

Tools

Decision poker cards for playing onsite or virtual white board for remote sessions

Hints

As an Agile Master or Agile Coach you can get an impression about the degree of self-confidence of the team by keeping an eye on which cards are mostly played.

See also

Decision Poker by Kurswechsel