Consensus


 * 2016-01-19: copied from Good meetings. RobLa-WMF intends to iteratively improve this, making this less about meetings and more about stages of consensus generally

Change is hard, especially in a consensus-oriented environment.

Big ideas often require consensus. Here are the main stages of building consensus for an idea. Some ideas are so self-evident that they can breeze through all of these steps with the able guidance of a trusted leader. Other ideas are more controversial, and need thoughtful progression through these stages. When an idea to solve a problem encounters resistance, the consensus-minded approach is to get the group to agree on where we are at in the list below (with respect to solving the problem), and build necessary trust to move to the next stage of problem solving.

Building consensus
The 4 stages of building consensus around a complicated engineering idea:


 * Strawman - Talk in depth about an engineering idea that doesn’t have consensus, potentially evangelizing that idea
 * Successful outcome: more people know about the idea, and maybe more people agree that it’s a great idea.
 * Successful outcome: clear definition and agreement on the problem the strawman is intended to solve
 * Stretch goal: consensus on the priority about the importance of solving the problem the strawman presumably solves (or consensus that it isn’t a problem after all)
 * Non-goal: consensus about the priority of implementing the engineering idea
 * Problem definition - Figure out what problem we're really trying to solve, and if it's really a problem
 * Successful outcome: consensus on the priority about the importance of solving this problem (or consensus that it isn’t a problem after all)
 * Successful outcome: a list of clearer problem statements that can be prioritized (e.g. if the problem is "code review sucks", emerge with a list of actionable things that suck about code review)
 * Stretch goal: an idea or a reasonably complete list of ideas for how to solve the problem. "Conversation for possibility" as described by 1999 article
 * Non-goal: a decision for how to solve the problem


 * Field narrowing - Narrow down choices for solving a problem, a.k.a. a &quot;conversation for opportunity.&quot;
 * Successful outcome: tentative consensus about the limited set of options, with someone assigned to clearly document the tentative consensus in the consensus-building forum of record (see )
 * Non-goal: singular consensus about the solution to the problem.  This is a nice bonus outcome, but if people enter the meeting afraid that the train is leaving the station, they may position themselves on the tracks rather than being helpful participants in the field narrowing conversation.


 * Consensus - Arrive at rough consensus about the best solution to a problem
 * Successful outcome: tentative consensus on a singular most viable solution to a problem, with agreement to postpone or eliminate competing solutions from consideration.  Someone assigned to clearly document the tentative consensus in an email to wikitech-l. Further advice:  RFC 7282: On Consensus and Humming in the IETF
 * Non-goal: “Resourcing agreement”.  We want to walk away from this type of meeting with tentative engineering consensus about the proper solution for the problem, but not an insistence for a real-time promise to “dedicate resources” to the proposed solution.

Evangelization
Once you've built consensus to implement something, your work isn't done. If your proposal is innovative enough, that means that it may not make sense to people comfortable with the status quo. Furthermore, you should still be open to the idea that you might have been wrong about the idea (and not draw people into supporting it purely via sunk cost fallacy)
 * Education - teaching people about an idea that already has consensus and/or has been implemented
 * Successful outcome: more widespread interest and knowledge about an existing engineering solution, and/or recruitment of people to support/maintain/use/implement the solution
 * Non-goal: retroactive blessing of a controversial portion of our system