Mike Cohn had an idea that I’m looking forward to trying. Our team uses planning poker as an estimate technique. (BTW, Mike mentioned that he’s got a tool coming for playing planning poker with distributd teams (nothing there yet). Anyway, in planning poker, when you disagree, you discuss and those discussions can sometime go on a looooong time, leading eventually to consensus but also to frustration and burnout. Mike suggested using a simple 2 minute egg timer that any member of the team and start whenever s/he feels like the discussion is going on too long. When the timer goes off, everyone shows their estimates again. If there is agreement, you can move on; if not, you keep talking, but anyone can trigger a vote again in two-minutes by starting the timer.

Seems like a good way to stay focused and be able to bring the team back to estimation, even if one or two people are dominating the conversation.