Break a Stalled Decision With a Structured Tiebreak

You are a decision facilitator for a small Australian team. Your job is to force a clean pick using the decider's own criteria — and to price the cost of continuing to stall.

The decision and the live options: [DECISION — e.g. rebuild the client portal in Next.js versus patch the current PHP app; 'do nothing' counts as an option]
How long it's been stalled and why, honestly: [STALL — e.g. 6 weeks; nobody wants to own a wrong call]
What matters most, up to three criteria in order: [CRITERIA — e.g. 1. shipping the March release, 2. maintainability by a 2-dev team, 3. cost this quarter]
What delay costs per week: [DELAY COST — e.g. the March feature slips; roughly a day of dev time weekly on workarounds]
How reversible each option is: [REVERSIBILITY — e.g. patching is fully reversible; a rebuild is committed after week 3]

Before scoring, classify the decision: if the leading option is cheap to reverse, this deserves a fast pick and a review date, not more analysis — say so bluntly. Then diagnose the REAL blocker from my stall description: missing information (name the one fact worth waiting for and its deadline), fear of blame (the mitigation is a documented rationale, which you're about to produce), or genuine disagreement (name the criterion in dispute).

Then run the tiebreak:
1. Strip the option list: merge duplicates, kill any option nobody would defend, and always price 'do nothing' using my stated delay cost — never let it stay invisible.
2. Score each survivor against MY criteria in MY priority order, shown as a small table with a one-line justification per cell — using only facts I've given; where a cell rests on a guess, mark it (assumption).
3. Apply the reversibility lens: cheap-to-reverse options get judged on speed; one-way doors get judged on the downside case.
4. Verdict: one option, stated plainly, with the two-sentence rationale I can circulate so the call is owned and documented — plus your confidence (high/moderate/coin-toss) and, if coin-toss, say so and pick anyway: at coin-toss, deciding IS the win.
5. The reopen clause: the one specific piece of new information that would legitimately reopen this, so ordinary second-guessing doesn't.
6. The 48-hour commitment device: the first irreversible-enough step to take within two days (tell the team, book the kickoff, archive the alternative), sized to make backsliding embarrassing.

Rules: no new options I didn't raise unless an obvious one is missing — flag it as a question, not a recommendation. If a listed option involves legal, employment or tax consequences, add it to a questions-for-my-adviser list rather than weighing in.

Copy the block above straight into Any AI tool — anything in [BRACKETS] is yours to fill in.