"Critical thinking is the intellectually disciplined process of actively and skillfully conceptualizing, applying, analyzing, synthesizing, and/or evaluating information gathered from, or generated by, observation, experience, reflection, reasoning, or communication, as a guide to belief and action." – The Foundation for Critical Thinking
To put it simply, critical thinking helps people look closely at the information in front of them and use it to make a logical decision. When presented with a task, a critical thinker won't rely on their assumptions or intuition. Instead, they'll take a methodical approach that involves asking questions, uncovering false assumptions, and evaluating various approaches to the problem at hand before deciding on the best path forward.
Why is critical thinking important in platform teams?
The mark of a true engineer is critical thinking — a key element especially at a proof-of-concept stage. In platform teams, the emphasis of critical thinking couldn’t be overstated — be it you playing the role of a lead, manager or an architect.
If you are a product owner or manager of the platform team, you always need to exercise your brains and thought process. Technology changes so rapidly that the solution you thought was the best, may be replaced by something else. You need to continue ensuring your assumptions/ plans are based on current facts - to ensure that the stakeholders (developers) have confidence in your solution/ platform, and you have good awareness of business and technology transformations impacting your actions.
When it comes to writing code, the scope of some projects can make it unrealistic to turn the ship around mid-stream, especially on collaborative tasks. Taking time to think through the pros and cons of every possible approach before getting started helps teams build logical strategies and avoid the time and hassle of doubling back to fix major (and preventable) problems.
Adaptability to the changes is one of the core strengths of the platform team. When it becomes clear that the current course of action isn't working, a critical thinker will take the opportunity to reflect on what went wrong, and will use what they learned to help guide decisions in the future. Understand that the core principle of the platform team is to enable developers to build scalable applications with high speed, quality and performance. So if your current approach is not suitable, its time to rethink and re-evaluate.
How to develop or sharpen your team's critical thinking skills?
Being objective is a fundamental part of critical thinking. That means analyzing the problem without allowing personal bias, emotions or assumptions to influence how you think. A strong critical thinker will only analyze a problem based on the context and facts collected after conducting thorough and impartial research.
Working in a platform team, you can follow these basic steps to develop the critical thinking skills of your team:
Identify the problem
Analyze the problem from several perspectives
Develop a few possible solutions
Decide which solution is the best fit
Analyze which solutions worked or didn't work
Take action
Identify ways to improve the solution
Making critical thinking a priority will help your team become the champions and leaders that can drive innovation and speed in your organization. With some deliberate practice and repetition, this kind of thinking will become second nature, allowing the team to solve problems more creatively and effectively.
Guidance : The critical thinking cheat sheet
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