A lot of the success of agile development teams relies heavily on consensus based decision making. In fact, the success of most teams in general, agile or not, is based on the same thing. However, I think there is a big misconception out there about what consensus is. In short, consensus doesn’t mean that everyone is in agreement. What it means is that everyone can live with something and support it. And if you’re doing agile and keeping your iterations to two weeks, it means you can live with and support the decision for the next two weeks. Then it can be revisited.

An easy way to arrive at a consensus is using the Fist of Five Rule. When trying to reach consensus, each team member holds up 1 to 5 fingers to show their level of agreement and support. Here’s the scale:

Fist: A no vote – a way to block consensus.

1 Finger: I am very opposed; we shouldn’t move forward (and yes, it should always be the index finger).

2 Fingers: I have reservations I’d like to think about.

3 Fingers: I can live with that and support it.

4 Fingers: I think it’s a great idea, I wish I thought of it.

5 Fingers: Wild unbridled support.

Try to get everyone to at least 3 fingers or better. That’s consensus. I can live with that.

Related posts:

1. Mid-week Iterations
2. Is Iteration Zero a good idea?
3. Scaling agile success
4. Agile adoption: Why isn’t this stuff working?
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