DecideAlready!: Group Decision Making Tool
Group decisions are a pain. Some project management sites offer voting or other setups for making semi-democratic decisions in a group setting, but most of the time this need is overlooked. If it’s not overlooked, like with MS Project, it’s buried in the tools list somewhere.
While not specifically project-targeted, DecideAlready is a very specific tool meant to do one thing: facilitate group decision making. It seeks to eliminate most of the chaos, lack of participation, and pointless discussion that group decisions (via meetings) usually entail.
Gone are the days of “reply all” email threads that go on for three days with fifteen participants and eight different conversation threads embedded in them. At least, that’s what DecideAlready hopes.
I couldn’t agree with them more, myself. Conference calls aren’t any better. Ten minute calls to “make a decision” always end up being half an hour or more. That’s just how the game is played. DecideAlready has some good and simple mechanics that get the job done.
First, the instigator creates a question, a list of possible answers, and a list of peers to send it to. The app takes over from there, sending the query to the list so they can click through to choose an answer. This is the simple version—no frills, no muss.
The next step up is the “ranked” version which lets answers be prioritized so that ranked answers can be given (this one first, then this one, then that one). More complex questions can be group-answered in this manner, so when the question of whether coffee, a cold water cooler, or Danish rolls are most important at the next meeting is asked…
The Advanced version has sliders where ranks can be based on criteria and moderated in this way. For extremely complex issues, this might be the way to go.
Overall, DecideAlready is a good tool that fills a specific task. It probably won’t replace management meetings, or the excuses offered to have them, but at least it can make the meetings more productive. One thing it can’t do is provide catering…
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