Talk to the Dummy
You’ve hit brain freeze. It seemed like such a great idea at the time, but now that it’s 2am, the application is down, and you can’t find the problem, maybe it wasn’t after all. Or maybe it’s 4pm, and you’re sitting at your desk trying to figure out how to resolve a problem, or build a system. You’re completely stuck, and you’ve no idea what to do next.
In either case, it feels like you’ve researched every avenue, you’ve thought of every angle, you’ve gone over the problem time and time again, and your brain just can’t wrap around the problem any longer. You go back over the same material again and again, just trying to make sense of it.
You’ve hit brain freeze. What’s the solution?
Talk to the dummy.
No, I don’t mean your boss. And I don’t mean that person down the hall you think just doesn’t “get it.” We’ll cover that topic later. I mean, literally, the dummy. In the “old days,” there were software shops that would literally set aside an office for a dummy. There was a white board, a desk, and a dummy sitting behind the desk. Your job, as an engineer, Continue reading