Hmmm. But there is a reason that design by committee is a curse word. To his credit, I found it interesting that Ousterhout at least gave a hat tip to the dicta

Hmmm. But there is a reason that design by committee is a curse word. To his credit, I found it interesting that Ousterhout at least gave a hat tip to the dictator school of thought. I think though that there are many more examples which he omits. Linus -- "Benevolent Dictator for Life" Guido Van Rossum -- ditto Just about every other open source worthy -- ditto Larry & Sergey -- ditto If you don't have that ruthless product genius with "taste" you just aren't going to achieve greatness, IMHO. Open to counterexamples, but every time I've observed consensus based decision making it has devolved into politics and pre-meetings and vote-swapping. And this is among both tech academics and tech startups, who one would hope would be more rational. Actually, this Onion clip captures what happens during an open consensus based process where everyone can see each other's votes: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uFpK_r-jEXg http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uFpK_r-jEXg Real-time pandering. Instead what you may want to do is buttonhole people or small groups with deep knowledge of the decision area, ask for their input, debate if you must, and then go out with a united front.