Problems not Solutions

Several themes in my software development life have really opened my eyes to those exact same issues outside of the software development industry. One big on recently has been:

Don’t bring solutions; bring the problems and then collaborate on solutions.

The first manifestation of this was during the creation and discussion of stories going up on a Kanban board. Some of those were like:

• Limit zip code to 6 digits.
• Allow only numeric characters in phone number field.
• Address should be a minimum of 2 characters.

Sound familiar? These were solutions provided to the team, completely disconnected from the problems that needed to be solved. Instead of coming at the team with these solutions, most of which were half-formed, only thinking of part of the actual problems, they should be more along the lines of:

• User must provide valid zip code for country/region
• Valid phone number must be entered for country/region specified
• Address entries should meet minimal requirements

Not great, but better. Those stories allow whoever is going to solve those problems the ability to think about creative solutions to get to the end result and not be tied to some other idea of an implementation.

Not Just Software

The other day I was looking for a better solution to holding some playing cards together than the flimsy rubber bands I was using. So I head over to a local hobby shop. I enter the store, and the cashier greets me warmly and asks if she can help me with anything.

“Sure, I’m looking for, like, a small card holder - like for a deck of cards.”

“Oh, hmmm”, she pondered. “Well, we have these,” she said, holding up a small Pokémon card box. I frowned a little, dismayed. “How many cards does it need to hold?” she asked, determined to help.

“Five to maybe thirty at the most”, I replied.

She then grabbed thirty Magic cards, and picked up a small plastic sleeve designed to hold baseball trading cards. “What about this”, she offered, showing the cards held in the sleeve.

Perfect!

After I left the store, purchase in hand, victorious, it struck me: I had come to her with a solution, instead of with the problem. Rather than collaborating on the solution, I had assumed I already had the answer, instead of trusting the person I was engaging to help me with the problem at hand.

Don’t bring solutions; bring the problems and then collaborate on solutions.

The solutions that are discovered will be more creative and all involved will be enriched by this approach.