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Stop Brainstorming

matthewstrom.com

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Re: Stop Brainstorming

#21

Post by forbiddenvoid »

_djo_ wrote: post #16
milesvp wrote: post #8

>Brainstorming has become a heuristic, an attempted shortcut, a lossy substitution for psychological safety. I'm glad this was where the author ended up. As I read this, I kept thinking that I know how to get better ideas out of people than a lot of typical brainstorming scenarios I've experienced in the past. My mind kept going back to how good some of the (Agile) retros I've had, and the one thing they all had in c…

Can you explain more about the 'turkey shoot' in brainstorming sessions, and the value it adds? It's not something I've heard about before.

It's basically just throwing an idea out there that's so bad it's easy to shoot down (like turkeys which are notoriously easy to shoot).

The value is creating space where the bar for acceptable ideas is so low that people don't self-censor.

Re: Stop Brainstorming

#22

Post by rurp »

I see a lot of parallels between this article and a discussion from yesterday about how often to loop in others on your work[0]. Like most things in life, there are a lot of complicated tradeoffs between solo work and group collaboration, and rarely any straightforward answers. That said, one prevelent trend is that whatever is in vogue is probably being over used.

If group brainstorming is top of mind for a lot of executives, it's a good bet that there's way too much of it going on. If a dev team thinks they always do their best work in isolation, they're probably missing out on some major benefits to be had by mixing in more collaboration and pair programming.

[0]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30074949

Re: Stop Brainstorming

#23

Post by ajuc »

ouid wrote: post #19
ajuc wrote: post #6

Brainstorming isn't for problem-solving, especially when problems are small and well defined. Communication overhead destroys the efficiency. I've participated in several team programming competitions. The way every team worked was - everybody read all tasks, quickly decide who works on what, and then we work solo on one problem each in parallel, when somebody finishes (s)he can help others who are stuck or take on a…

I think the opitmal number of people working on a problem is somewhere between 1 and 2. The amount of communication required obviously scales very poorly, but in principle, having to explain your process to someone else functions well. I prefer pair programming to solo work, usually. I catch more bugs, and am forced to explain things to myself as I explain them to my partner.

Pair programming works well for tasks that take a few days. For tasks that take hours it's not worth it IMHO.

Re: Stop Brainstorming

#24

Post by TameAntelope »

I buy the ineffectiveness of brainstorming meetings.

I don’t think it’s as big of a deal as it might seem, though. You still need to get together and decide what to do with your team, it just probably should be a safe space is all. We knew that.

Hardly anything works without safety, and nearly anything works with safety. Sounds good to me.

Re: Stop Brainstorming

#25

Post by andrewstuart »

I can say with certainty that failure to be systematic about idea generation has led to many failed projects that otherwise could have been great successes. These projects were, in hindsight, "almost hugely successful", had we had the correct idea to pivot to. Sometimes only a tweak or an additional feature was required.

Also, a separate comment to this thread:

Edward De Bono's "Six Thinking Hats" is an alternative way of approaching innovative idea generation.

https://www.debonogroup.com/services/core-programs/six-think...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six_Thinking_Hats

Re: Stop Brainstorming

#26

Post by atmb4u »

Great ideas comes from individuals; But a combination of ideas as a team effort is what usually solves sizable problems.

There may be narrow use cases where the overhead of brainstorming doesn't add any value; but otherwise, I still believe brainstorming is a good way to consider alternatives for open-ended problems.

Collective >> Individuals or 1+1=3

Re: Stop Brainstorming

#27

Post by lifeisstillgood »

It's amazing how much I have built my career around psychological safety (one tends to admit these things a bit more as we get older)

So yes. If anything can improve your work experience, your productivity , it's psychological safetry

Taken to an extreme it would be sensible to give teams a annual bonus at the start of the year. Give them FU money and so be fairly confident they will say FU when it's needed

Re: Stop Brainstorming

#29

Post by codeflo »

I think the article’s missing an important trick: Brainstorming establishes a shared understanding (depending on the group dynamics, you might call it a fiction) that the group, not any individual, came up with the idea. That sense of ownership is psychologically important for aligning the group during the execution phase: People are usually a lot more motivated to implement a plan that they came up with, and if anyone challenges the idea, much more eager to defend it.

Re: Stop Brainstorming

#30

Post by Trasmatta »

rurp wrote: post #22

I see a lot of parallels between this article and a discussion from yesterday about how often to loop in others on your work[0]. Like most things in life, there are a lot of complicated tradeoffs between solo work and group collaboration, and rarely any straightforward answers. That said, one prevelent trend is that whatever is in vogue is probably being over used. If group brainstorming is top of mind for a lot of e…

> That said, one prevelent trend is that whatever is in vogue is probably being over used.

This is a great rule of thumb, and could likely be applied to itself even, if it become a widespread sentiment.

It's not quite the same thing, but I think there might be a relationship to Goodhart's Law. It may also partially explain why Agile has gone so wrong for so many companies.

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