MT340 Unit 9 Conflict Facilitation Plan Example

Criteria Before Options, the Rule Before the Room: An MT340 Unit 9 Facilitation Plan for a Game Studio's Scope-Cut Meeting

[Student Name]

Purdue University Global

MT340: Conflict Management and Team Dynamics

Unit 9 Facilitation Plan

[Instructor Name]

[Date]

The studio, people and features are composite; the frameworks and research cited are real.

The Situation

The studio is about six weeks behind on content for its milestone. The leads of design, engineering, art and narrative each have features they believe are essential. Previous attempts to cut scope ended in arguments, with each lead defending their own work and the producer, who owns the schedule, caught in the middle. The meeting must end with a decision.

Facilitator

The studio's operations manager will facilitate. The producer cannot, because the schedule is the producer's and the producer is therefore a party. The operations manager knows the studio's processes, has no feature to defend and is trusted by all four leads.

Decision Rule, Announced in Advance

The decision will be a consultative call by the creative director, made before the meeting ends, after hearing every lead and seeing the scored options. Vroom (2000) described consultative decisions as appropriate when a leader needs others' information and input but time does not allow full consensus. The rule will be stated in the meeting invitation and again at the start, so no one expects a vote and no one can later say the process was unclear.

Preparation

Forty-eight hours before the meeting, each lead circulates a one-page case: which features they would cut, which they would protect and why, with estimated days saved for each. The facilitator collects them and sends all four to everyone.

The Agenda

Block one, ten minutes: purpose and rule. The facilitator states the goal, about thirty working days saved, and the decision rule.

Block two, fifteen minutes: criteria. Before any feature is mentioned, the group agrees how options will be judged. The facilitator proposes four criteria and the group may adjust them: player-facing loss, how much players would notice; crash risk, whether the cut removes code likely to cause bugs; days saved; and narrative dependency, whether other content depends on the feature. Criteria agreed now cannot be changed later in the meeting.

Block three, twenty minutes: four cases. Each lead presents their one-page case in five minutes. Only clarifying questions are allowed.

Block four, fifteen minutes: restating round. Each lead summarizes another lead's case, and the case's owner says whether the summary is accurate. The round continues until each owner accepts the summary.

Block five, ten minutes: silent options. Each person writes options on cards without discussion, one combination of cuts per card, that would save about thirty days.

Block six, fifteen minutes: scoring. Options are posted and scored against the four criteria. Discussion is allowed here, but only about scores.

Block seven, five minutes: decision. The creative director chooses an option and explains it against the criteria.

Why This Order

Kaner (2014) describes participatory decision-making as a diamond: groups first open up to diverse views, then pass through an uncomfortable middle period he calls the groan zone, where differences are hard to integrate, and finally converge on a decision. Most meetings skip the opening and try to converge at once, which in this studio has produced arguments rather than decisions. This agenda builds the diamond in: blocks three to five open it, block six is the groan zone and block seven converges.

Agreeing criteria first matters most. Fisher et al. (2011) recommend agreeing on objective criteria before positions harden. If the leads agree what makes a good cut before they see which of their features are at risk, the criteria cannot be bent to protect anyone's work.

If the leads agree what makes a good cut before they see whose features are on the list, nobody can argue the criteria were chosen against them.

The Restating Round

The restating round slows the meeting down at the point where earlier meetings sped up. Hearing their own case summarized by a rival lets each lead know they were understood, and having to summarize a rival's case forces each lead to listen. A lead who cannot summarize another's case accurately has not yet heard it.

Silent Options

Writing options silently prevents the loudest voice from setting the frame. It also lets leads propose cuts to their own features without having to say so aloud first, which some may find easier.

Parking Lot

Anything personal, such as complaints about past cuts or about another lead's behavior, goes on a parking lot sheet. The facilitator promises to raise each item with the right person after the meeting, and does.

What Could Go Wrong

A lead may reject the criteria. The facilitator will allow changes in block two only, and will remind the group that criteria are agreed before options precisely to protect everyone. A lead may refuse to accept a summary in block four. The facilitator will ask the summarizer to try once more, then move on with the owner's correction recorded. The creative director may want more time. The rule says the decision is made before the meeting ends; if no option reaches thirty days, the creative director chooses the closest and names what remains to be cut by Friday.

References

Fisher, R., Ury, W., & Patton, B. (2011). Getting to yes: Negotiating agreement without giving in (3rd ed.). Penguin.

Kaner, S. (2014). Facilitator's guide to participatory decision-making (3rd ed.). Jossey-Bass.

Vroom, V. H. (2000). Leadership and the decision-making process. Organizational Dynamics, 28(4), 82-94. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0090-2616(00)00003-6