The key to becoming a good Solution Developer, is to start at being a poor or average Solution Developer. Own it and give yourself some grace. It is only through failure that you really start to become familiar with what you know and what you don’t know.
In order to advance, you need to start building out a set of tools that you can draw upon.This tool chest is the backbone of your career. These tools encompass many different aspects.
When you first start out in work, maybe right out of college, or high school, or maybe neither, your tool chest is pretty small. There are a number of really basic tools that are necessary for any career.
- Communication
- Work Tools (physical and technology)
- Techniques
You should start by having at least a few items in each of these categories.
Communication
This is the basis for all work that is being performed and how it will often be assessed. This is how you interact with other people and things within the world. Both written and oral communication are extremely important within most of the world, but do not underestimate the value of graphics. “A picture is worth a thousand words,” as the phrase goes. While in school, you were probably taught the basics of written communication, and if you were lucky, you received some lessons in oral communication as well.
Unfortunately, many are not exposed to graphical communication. I mean more than just graphs with numbers and charts, but graphics that can influence people viscerally. We have been taught over many years (at least in the Western culture) that things denoting numbers that are red have a negative connotation, while blue numbers are positive. Likewise, lines and shades of color that go from a higher to lower represent bad news, while going from the bottom to higher have similar emotional responses.
Work Tools
Growing up many of us started using physical tools, hammers, screw drivers, wrenches and so forth. These tools interacted with the physical world, acting upon a tangible thing that someone could touch and feel. We have eventually created more elaborate tools that make things easier and faster, like a ratchet wrench or nail gun. For some people they fill their toolboxes with these things and are great at building and repairing things. I am a big fan of hand built wood furniture and I know how difficult and time consuming it is to make such beautiful things.
For others, their tool chest includes computers, sensors, software, computer languages, and various other technologies. In this day and age, the sets of technology tools change constantly. However, many of them have similar underlying properties that will allow you to move from one tool to another. Understanding the basic principles of what each tool can do for you is the important thing to learn. What that tool ends up being in practice will change over time, but conceptually, you know what kind of tool you want.
“If Your Only Tool Is a Hammer Then Every Problem Looks Like a Nail“
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This is a bit of a warning to new solution developers. Your tool chest needs to be cared for like a house. Preventative maintenance is required. You need to clean your air vents, cut the lawn, replace appliances, and fix structural damage. Your career tool chest needs the same attention. You will need to upgrade tools, change tools, acquire new tools.
Techniques
This is a very broad topic and cannot be addressed adequately (nor can the others I have mentioned) within this single short article. Ultimately, techniques are things that allow you to organize and apply strategies to achieve a particular goal. For teachers these techniques may include the Inquiry teaching method, Explicit teaching method, or the Scientific method amongst others.
In the software development world, these techniques often revolve around communication of ideas. Graphical representation of abstract concepts (UML and ERD pictures) are good examples. But equally important are the techniques to extract the underlying problems that are trying to be solved. These have traditionally been described as requirements gathering, but it really goes far beyond that. Understanding the root of the problem allows us to explore many ideas that would seem crazy at the time. And sometimes the solution to the problem has no technical solution, but it is actually a business process problem.
Understand and practicing formal root cause analysis (RCA) techniques such as The Five Why’s and Ishikawa Diagrams can be invaluable to you on a daily basis. When you internalize these processes and make them second nature, you will be able to take on the most daunting of problems without fear of failure.
Utilizing Your Tool Chest
Having a set of tools you are familiar with is just a start. You need to learn how to master them. Knowing when each of the tools is appropriate,and when you may need to pick up a new tool. Understanding how each of these fits into solving problems in your own unique way is what will make you a valuable contributor to any organization. Keeping your tools sharp and continuously adding to your skills will always help you in your career.