Nominal Group Technique

Purpose

To prioritize or select from a number of items by giving all team members an equal voice.

Steps

1. Have everyone on the team write down the item that he/she feels is most important.
2. Create a list of the items where the team can see them.
3. Ask the team members to write on a piece of paper the letters corresponding to the number of items the team produced. For example: if you ended up with five (5) items, everyone would write the letters "A" through "E" on the paper.
4. Make sure that each item has a letter in front of it. Then ask the team members to vote on which is most important by putting a five (5) next to that item's letter.
5. Everyone then has to complete the list by voting what's second most important, third most important, etc.
   Note: When dealing with a large number of items, it may be necessary to limit the items to be considered. Multi-voting can be used to first narrow the list before using NGT.
6. Add up each line of numbers across and put the items in prioritized order.
7. Discuss prioritized list to reach consensus.
8. The team would work on the top item first, and then move through the list.

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