Example data. Fieldnote is a fictional company used to fill all 61 boards, so the examples tell one consistent story.
Scale-up, Élise, Karim and Tom choose how to deliver the invoicing integration: three options, three weighted criteria.
What the team took away
The CSV export scores highest but does not fix the Sunday retyping that drives churn; the team picks Option B and keeps the CSV as a two-day fallback for the accountants who refuse any integration.
How to run it
Preparation
Invite the person who signs the decision and two or three experts who know the options. Never more than six.
Send the two or three options with a one-page description of each two days before. Nobody discovers an option in the session.
Pre-fill the board with the options as rows and a blank column set. Do not pre-fill the criteria: they are the first thing to agree on.
Agenda
20 min
Fix the criteria Brainstorm criteria for 5 minutes in silence, then merge to a maximum of five. Read each one as a question: 'how well does this option do X?'
15 min
Weight them Give each criterion a weight of 3, 2 or 1. Only one criterion can be a 3. If two people want different 3s, the decision owner picks.
15 min
Score in silence Everyone scores each option on each criterion from 1 to 5 on their own copy. Silence prevents anchoring on the first voice.
25 min
Compare and argue Reveal the scores. Discuss only the cells where the spread is 2 points or more. The expert closest to the topic explains, then everyone re-scores that cell.
10 min
Compute and decide Sum the weighted scores. If the top two are within 10 %, the decision owner chooses and says why on the board. The matrix informs, it does not decide.
5 min
Close Write the decision, the date and the losing options with one line on why not. That paragraph is the deliverable.
Pitfalls
Do not add a criterion after scoring started because your favorite option is losing. Freeze the columns before the first score.
Do not use the matrix to sort a backlog of 20 items. It is for two or three structural options, once.
Do not hide behind the number. If the winning option feels wrong to the decision owner, the criteria were wrong: say it and fix them, do not adjust scores.
Afterwards
The decision paragraph goes into a DACI or the project channel with the matrix as an attachment. If the chosen option is a build, it gets a one-page PRD next.