16.6 Stakeholder Consensus Meetings

Before the consensus meetings, several profiles were combined to encourage compromise. We looked for priorities common to two or more stakeholder groups, such as implementing Inventory in an early increment and risk mitigation. We also addressed the demonstration of progress in each increment, based on business object completion. Finally, we generated four viable compromises to start negotiations.

Although the early completion of business objects emerged as a goal, necessity dictated that a business object's development be distributed across increments, although this was not to the architecture team's liking. The result was that work on each business object would begin in the first increment and continue in each ensuing increment. At least one business object would be completed per increment. This required a modification to SAM to fix the increments in which business objects were completed.

The four combinations were based on a specified order for business object completion. We determined the groupings of data for SAM's input and generated the profile output products. The completion orders are shown in Table 16-1.

The use of PowerPoint slides was deemed too limiting for the consensus meeting. The profiles could be compared adequately only by viewing them side-by-side. We prepared color prints and spread them across the conference room table. The decision makers walked around the table, shuffled the charts this way and that, and made occasional pronouncements. Then they chose an order and voted unanimously for it, although the user representatives grumbled over the fact that Audit/History was given top billing in the first increment. These recommendations were applied to form the consensus profile.

Table 16-1. Completion Orders

	Compromise 1	Compromise 2	Compromise 3	Compromise 4
Increment 1	Audit/History and Requisition	Audit/History and Requisition	Audit/History and Catalog	Audit/History and Catalog
Increment 2	Demand Planning and Catalog	Inventory and Catalog	Demand Planning and Requisition	Inventory
Increment 3	Inventory	Demand Planning	Inventory	Demand Planning and Requisition
Increment 4	Orders and Work in Process	Orders and Work in Process	Orders and Work in Process	Orders and Work in Process
Increment 5	All remaining	All remaining	All remaining	All remaining