Brainstorming

Case Study:

We’re having a full day where we brainstorm freely around our projects and the new features in iOS 14 and Android 11 with our teams… And I’m absolutely terrible at brainstorming and “being creative on schedule” (? not sure how to describe it). I’m really not looking forward to today, though I might of course be worrying for nothing since we’re just about to start so I don’t know how it will be… But still, I hope we have some structure at least.

Recommendation:

I get a similar feeling before / during retros where the format changes every time and we’re not told about it in advance. I don’t know how I’m supposed to just remember all the important points / manipulate them to fit the format so I can still bring them up within two minutes. I don’t want to give unsolicited advice, but I’ll share two things I recently talked about with my counselor, in case it helps:

1. Depression comes from thinking about the past, anxiety comes from thinking about the future. When we focus on the present, we have more room for other feelings

2. So what? Just always, “so what?” So what if you need to brainstorm? So what if you don’t come up with many suggestions? So what if you’re not creative on the spot? So what if there’s no structure?

-- Cassandra H Leung

Case Study cont...

Yeah… I guess I feel a bit stressed about having to be creative, and worrying that I (like I’ve historically had issues with) won’t come up with something and feeling like I’m not contributing? I think it’s part of my cycle where I feel bad/worthless and then feel less motivated and then don’t do things as well as I could which just confirms my inner worthless-feeling, and round we go? I know about it, I just don’t know how to break out of it yet.

Thank you for the suggestions, it’s actually helping. Especially the “so what?” which when I cycle through that actually reminds me that yeah, so what, maybe it’s not that important that I come up with great ideas, maybe my participation can help someone else think of something?

Recommendation:

It's also worth remembering that you don't need to be amazing at everything. I definitely struggle with creativity, but I've worked on some really creative teams before where I've been able to step back and let the creative people shine and I can support that by making sure they have everything they need and I deal with the things they aren't so strong at. I actually found in that job that I'm more creative than I think - I learned a lot from the more creative members of my team.

-- Carly Lilwall

I am terrible at contributing to things like this! I find it a lot easier to jump off other people’s ideas and thoughts that come up with my own. Most of the time, by the time I’ve thought of something someone else has had the same thought and contributed it already so..

Lean into what you’re good at! Be the person who when someone says ‘what did we say about X?’ can say ‘oh, we said this! Also, maybe this’ and save the day.

-- Gem Hill

Case Study cont...

it’s kind of relieving to hear that someone else has discovered the same kind of cycle? Although it’s of course kind of sad that we even need to be in these to start with. I hope we can break out of it in the end! Right now I’m just listening mostly and somewhat following along and contributing where I can. I’m better at listening and documenting, so I’m focusing on that right now

Recommendation:

I know the feeling. I could never deal with these "Say/Write down the first thing that comes to your mind". 100% garanteed blank mind. Really glad no one has asked me that in a long time. We try to make our meeting invites as specific as possible, even for retros and dailys. You can come prepared.

-- AnnaB

Case Study cont...

Yesterday went so-so. Morning went well, but the afternoon was basically wasted time. In the morning, we did brainstorming for the two features we narrowed in on and wrote down some user stories for it and then voted what to go for. Afternoon was basically just the designers and UXers researching and designing a prototype, the devs looking into how to do the features, and the rest… not really doing anything but listening? It felt like we couldn’t really contribute to that part, and eventually I started doing some documentation and stuff that had bothered me for a while and I needed to fix anyway, So all in all… I don’t know, while the morning went a little better than expected, I didn’t really get much out of it except being more updated on what’s new. Which I guess is also good. But either way, I wish there was a little more guidance for roles that are outside of the standard dev & design roles on what to do and how to contribute (outside of “go outside your role!“)Besides that, it was decent.

Recommendation:

Glad that it was decent. Sounds like it wasn’t as bad as you thought it might be and that you managed to use the time to get some things done anyway. As for contributing more towards something like that, maybe looking into shift left / expand outwards would give you some ideas? Or you could ask the designers / UXers / devs directly what they would find valuable in those situations.

-- Cassandra H Leung