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Play of the month: How does your team make group decisions?

Kristen Roth

Did you know it's estimated that we make over 35,000 decisions every day? 🤯

But making good decisions (and making them efficiently!) isn’t always easy. Especially when there’s a group involved. Well, we’ve got a Play to help you with that. The DACI (Driver, Approver, Contributor, Informed) framework outlines who's responsible for what and when, and helps eliminate the confusion that can sometimes come along with group decision making.

Here’s a quick breakdown of DACI roles and responsibilities:

Driver: in charge pushing the team to the best possible outcome
Approver: has the final say on which path the team should take
Contributors: provide background info, data, and expertise
Informed: not expected to contribute, but need to be aware

(And an example of how to create a DACI in Trello! ⇣)

daci trello.jpg

Having defined and properly documented roles and responsibilities at the start of a decision will leave you feeling more confident coming out on the other side. The DACI Play will help bring clarity to your decision-making process while also serving as a reference for showing other teams (and reminding you 6 months later!) how you got to the end result.

Do you use DACIs with your teams? Do they help with your decision making process? We'd love to hear what works for you!

Comments

Vero Rivas

Hi @Kristen Roth

35,000 decisions a day, I had never heard of it.

Of course, throughout the day you decide many things such as clothing, what you eat throughout the day, shoes that match your clothing, whether you drive or take public transport, but I would never have thought that

Very curious fact, I will not try to count them because I would lose count, but I will pay more attention to it

Thanks for sharing

Cheers

Dave

One of the key things our team has found with DACIs is to not let them run too long. Setting a distant due date can let it linger without progress and often you only get a flurry of activity towards the end - definitely important to set a realistic due date. They're great for asynchronous collaboration on a decision but it's often useful to bring people together to check in on progress in person / on a call!

Jayesh Baviskar

D.A.C.I. really helps in making group decisions. Just now observed that within my team we are following same approach, which is really having some name for it.

John Funk

Gosh, if we have to decide to use DACI or not, now it's 35,001 decisions for toady! :-)

Kristen Roth

Thanks for reading, @Vero Rivas !

Kristen Roth

Great tip, @Dave !

Kristen Roth

😜 ha, @John Funk !

Brant Schroeder

We use RACI but have never used DACI. Looks like this would be an excellent tool to ensure that decisions are made by the right individuals and that others properly participate and are informed.

Martin Bayer _MoroSystems_ s_r_o__

We just had a discussion about this topic yesterday. We're not so far, or maybe one level up. We were talking about company values and the connection to decisions vs. individual approach to decisions. So we're on level where we're talking what inputs we need to start discussion and what will not be the part of it.

But I will check DACI definitelly and the Trello board looks nice

Tinker Fadoua

In my team I am definitely a Contributor. I do share my input when something needs the team attention or if a process can be improved.

G subramanyam

Learned a new acronym DACI. I remember Deming's cycle: PDAC (Plan-Do-Act-Check) @Kristen Roth

Laura Holton _ACE Manchester_

Really enjoyed reading this play @Kristen Roth!

Kristen Roth

Let us know what you think, @Martin Bayer _MoroSystems_ s_r_o__ ! And if you use a Trello board

Kristen Roth

Glad to hear it, @Laura Holton _ACE Manchester_ !

Stanislav_cjfmi4

Big brain play!

sudarshan_x34rab

Very nice.
Like DACI, we have tried with Delegation board, which is also really useful - mainly on the thought of who does what and when.!

Çiğdem Büyükaşik

Honestly, we never used that so I can't comment on the benefits. We always have insightful discussions, but might take a bit longer than expected naturally. DACI does seem to have the potential to bring structure to discussions held in an effort to make group decisions.

Jack Brickey

DACI is new info for me but will now keep it in mind moving forward.

Eva Kasiak

DACI is great for Agile teams. Theoretically in Scrum for instance the whole team as a cross-functional, self-organized group is driving the work towards increment and Sprint goal delivery. What happens quite often - especially for the retrospective actions - is that the whole team is accountable, but then it's unclear who will drive the action and lead the various activities towards the implementation of the retro improvement.

From this point of DACI is a perfect fit to establish clarity over ownership, consultancy, approvals etc. I find it very handy for the retro actions as well as team workshop actions.

Kristen Roth

Yes! Thanks for chiming in, @Eva Kasiak !

Jay_izxrm9

Interesting Play....35,000 decisions blows my mind but I then thought about how indecisive I am :-D

I wonder if the model works inside a Jira ticket, for example.

Driver: in charge pushing the team to the best possible outcome
- This person is the reporter on the ticket
Approver: has the final say on which path the team should take
- This person is the assignee on the ticket
  - Perhaps only assigned by the Driver once the Contributors are finished
  - Or auto assigned by an automation rule when the driver pushes the ticket into a 'requiring approval' status
Contributors: provide background info, data, and expertise
- These people are tagged in the description to elaborate on the ticket and add information, thoughts etc.
  - This can be worked through the comments section and then the 'final' information included in the Description
Informed: not expected to contribute, but need to be aware
- These people are watchers.

As I typed the above I thought more and wondered if perhaps it would be better for this to be held in a Confluence Template and used,

Driver: in charge pushing the team to the best possible outcome
- Creator of the Page from the Template
Approver: has the final say on which path the team should take
- Listed in the template and only notified/added when it reaches a 'Ready for Approval' status
Contributors: provide background info, data, and expertise
- Tagged in the page on first publish and their job is to work with the Driver to fill the template out fully with everything the Approver needs through
  - Using the page as the place for the proposed and eventual final page
  - Using the comments as a place for discussion
- Ensuring all is documented through the comments and page versions
Informed: not expected to contribute, but need to be aware
- Added at the start by the Driver as watchers of the page

any input or examples of this being used like this @Kristen Roth

Bill Sheboy

Greetings! Decision making has "who" and "how" components, and I recommend looking into Delegation Poker to support the "who" for team decision making. This method supports the idea of balancing autonomy with maturity level, and that teams progress over time to gain autonomy with maturity. Check out this book for more information on that balance: Agile Leadership Toolkit: Learning to Thrive with Self-Managing Teams by Peter Koning.

Shrikant Wagh_uxegw8

This is really an interesting read. http://science.unctv.org/content/reportersblog/choices

Kristen Roth

Nice, Jay! Your descriptions of each role and their participation/use of the page here look perfect. And yes! We do have a Confluence (and Trello!) Template for DACI. I hadn't thought about transitioning this Play to a Jira use case but your model above looks great.

Reply Test Group

Very very nice!

Huwen Arnone [Deiser/Devoteam]

This play comes as a ring to my finger; I've been looking to implement something like this, especially from the Contributor's point of view, which hasn't been considered lately in recent meetings.

Thank you, @Kristen Roth

Caroline R

We really like to use DACI on our team, but I didn't know this Trello version, I've always used the Confluence template. Next time, I'll try Trello!

Ajay _view26_

Thanks @Kristen Roth ! Will definitely keep a note of DACI!

nina_schmidt

We have a DACI matrix for our project process which is really helpful and very important. Never thought about using it for team decisions. Thank you!

Kristen Roth

You bet, @nina_schmidt !

Liam Green

I think this is a really interesting idea, and way of documenting. Will feed into the team and see what they think

Suvradip Paul

@Kristen Roth - I think we all do same thing during decision making but this structural DACI (Driver, Approver, Contributor, Informed) framework would streamline the process and would give a better clarity to everyone and reminds me of RACI.

I have a few questions, is it fair and acceptable if a personal plays multiple role and if yes and it raises conflict of interest then what's best practice to sort this out?

Cheers

Suvradip

Christine P. Dela Rosa

Great question and absolutely. At Atlassian, individuals often play multiple roles (e.g. both Approver and Driver) and that's absolutely okay.

The point of a DACI or RACI is to understand who's in charge of what (e.g. how much influence do they have over a decision) and the implications of different scenarios on decision-making. It isn't about ensuring that roles are balanced or that different people fall into each letter in the framework.

To your last question @Suvradip Paul, if playing multiple roles produces a conflict, I'd ask why that's happening.

If the conflict arises because there's disagreement on Approver decisions or on the way Drivers handle things, then I'd ask the team to revisit if they're truly good with the DACI/RACI owners.
If they're not sure, then perhaps there were role assignments as opposed to group discussion to the final DACI/RACI roles.
And if there's conflict because there's unforeseen circumstances that arise, then the Driver should probably document what's going on so that everyone's aware of what happens if different paths are taken. And that's the full DACI template we share on the Atlassian Team Playbook site.

A lot of people think DACIs and RACIs are largely about role defining, but they often forget there are scenarios that need to be documented so that everyone's on the same page on what might happen in different situations.

Brittany Wispell

This is great. When I was reading the initial post I was wondering how this would fit into Jira/Confluence! We use Jira & Confluence for change management. I have a few questions if anyone has a moment to provide some insight and suggestions.

My team is a global team KL, UK, NA and in NA we have people across all time zones.

The main questions I have is do we split up decisions by global team having specific DACI roles for that global team or do we have 1 person from each region as a DACI?

Would it be too much to have a Driver & Approver from each region? With the wide variety of skills we have across regions we could have multiple contributors at a time.

Our team dynamic is to have everyone involved as much as they want to be, and most of the team wants to be involved whether in a contributor capacity or driver capacity.

Hopefully the above makes sense. Any suggestions or "Hey we've been doing it this way" would be greatly appreciated.

Aswin Achuthan

Good one! I wonder if there is any bot in slack for this

Esme Crutchley

OMG, I've never seen this before, but cor blimey it's powerful!

Sedera Randria

Just found this picture

Youtube video : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Q7H5jtYUo4

Marjorie

We hash it out.

Okan Erdogan_i5ujtx

This is exactly what I need! We're struggling to make decisions and I end up making the executive decision as a project lead. Need to get better!

Kerry Low

Hi, I agree that its helpful having a structured model to drive efficient decision making however how do you create an environment where you have robust decision making ie how do you create an environment where there is critical thinking and challenge rather than a "yes" culture?

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