  In multi-criteria decision analysis workshops, participants often appraise
the options individually before discussing the scoring as a group. The
individual appraisals lead to score ranges within which the group then seeks
the necessary agreement to identify their preferred option. Preference
programming enables some options to be identified as dominated even before the
group agrees on a precise scoring for them. Workshop participants usually face
time pressure to make a decision. Decision support can be provided by flagging
options for which further agreement on their scores seems particularly
valuable. By valuable, we mean the opportunity to identify other options as
dominated (using preference programming) without having their precise scores
agreed beforehand. The present paper quantifies this Value of Agreement and
extends the concept to portfolio decision analysis and criterion weights. The
new concept is validated through a case study in recruitment.
