The nominal group technique is a group process involving problem identification, solution generation, and decision making. It can be used in groups of many sizes, who want to make their decision quickly, as by a vote, but want everyone’s opinions taken into account. Wikipedia
Nominal group technique a structured adaptation of brainstorming. It encourages contributions from participants and facilitates quick agreement on the relative importance of issues, problems, or solutions.
The process is straight forward. There are 3 basic steps to the nominal group technique, although some facilitators may embellish the procedures.
The basic steps are:
Brainstorm
Generate many ideas as quickly as possible
Discuss
Every contributing group member is required to participate in the discussion of each of the ideas in a round robin discussion. Pros and cons of each idea may be debated. Similar ideas may be combined and duplicates are discarded
Vote
The group votes and ranks the remaining ideas in order of priority, highest to lowest. The process is repeated as needed to identify the best solution