Difference between revisions of "Brian hours"

Revision as of 14:40, 1 July 2020

The more thought you give a problem the better the solution. It's common sense, don't you think? It's also true. But that doesn't stop some people from ignoring the facts and ploughing on with their own, flawed ideas. And they are almost always flawed, and direclty so due to the lack of thought. So let's see why.

Time is a scarce resource. This concept will be familiar to anyone who has been involved with any project in any field at any time. It encourages rushing. But that is not necessarily a problem if we rush in the right direction. i.e. If you adopt the right solution, it doesn't matter how long it takes. If you adopt the wrong solution, it matters. It matters a lot. Clients will not want to pay for your mistakes, nor will your boss.

Let's take a common situation: a client (or their represntative) is helping design the solution. When faced with a problem, they think about it, and come up with a solution. They used their one brain for a number of hours. If there are two people coming up with a solution independently from each other, there will be two brains. If there are two people arriving at a consensus, there is one brain. In a room of N people, there is only 1 person speaking - all other brains are being led by that one and are not thinking independently. This is why brainstorming only works when no one is in control of the whiteboard. Furthermore, it works best when operating in silence, freeing all the brains present to think at their own speed in their own directions. It is important to identify how many brains are actively thinking, and the number of hours they have to think.