Multi and weighted voting helps a team narrow a long list of ideas down to the priorities worth working on. Use it after a brainstorm, once you have more ideas than you can act on.
The method has two rounds. Multi voting removes the ideas with the least support. Weighted voting then signals which of the remaining ideas the team thinks matters most.
Before you start
Review the brainstormed ideas as a team and remove exact duplicates. Aim to halve the number of sticky notes before voting begins. Keep the discarded notes nearby in case you need to revisit them.
Multi voting
Multi voting reduces the list to the ideas that have broad team support.
- Give each person 20 votes.
- Ask each person to place one vote per sticky note, on the ideas they see as highest priority.
- Remove any sticky notes that received no votes. Set them aside rather than discarding them.
Keep removing notes with the fewest votes (one vote, then two, and so on) until the list is about half the size you started with. For example, 40 sticky notes reduced to 20.
Weighted voting
Weighted voting shows which of the remaining ideas the team sees as most important.
- Give each person half the number of votes used in multi voting (for example, 10 votes if multi voting used 20).
- Each person can place all their votes on a single sticky note, or spread them across several.
The notes with the most weighted votes are the team's priorities to take forward.