Edward de Bono (47)

On June 9th 2021 Edward de Bono passed away. De Bono was a psychologist, physician, philosopher, and a productive writer. He is probably most know for the term 'lateral thinking' which he invented. Requirements engineers often know him from his book 'Six Thinking Hats' or from the methods Plus-Minus-Interesting (PMI) and Consider All Factors (CAF). I think promoting 'teaching of thinking' in schools is one of his major achievements. Over the years De Bono wrote 85 books of which I only read three. 'Simplicity' (1999) must have been the first, and after that 'De Bono's Thinking Course' (1982) (in which PMI and CAF are described, methods that are taught in IREB CPRE trainings) and 'Six Thinking Hats' (1985).

Triggered by some comment on De Bono's later work being too commercial (he made a move from science to consultancy) I decided to reread part of his 'Thinking Course'. I wanted to have a look at the description of the PMI and CAF methods, but I was caught by the first paragraph of the first chapter. The paragraph was titled 'The intelligence trap'. It is basically about how high intelligence doesn't guarantee good thinking. One of the aspects of the intelligence trap is that (I quote from his book) 'many highly intelligent minds are trapped in poor ideas because they can defend them so very well', which at this moment seems to be a remark more applicable than ever to several Dutch politicians.

I decided to read on a bit. The second part I read was about practice. De Bono is very convincing when he writes that practice doesn't guarantee improvement of a skill, which he illustrates by stating that practicing two-finger typing for years is not going to make you a good typist.

Now why is this important to requirement engineers?

You could limit yourself to what is strictly necessary: talking to your customers, and find out what they want, write that down and hand over the information to the development department. But you can do more. Maybe the customers are stuck in their way of thinking. They have a solution in mind, which they could have written down themselves and discuss with the developers. There is an opportunity to add value, though. You can help your clients to get rid of the limitations in their way of thinking, to become more creative and that is where you can apply the thinking tools Edward de Bono describes.

De Bono calls the PMI (plus-minus-interesting) tool an attention-directing tool, it redirects your attention away from the opinions you already formed and therefor makes it possible to create new opinions or ideas. So forget for a moment that you know that your solution is the best solution and think about the good points (Plus, this is why you know it is a good solution) and the bad points (Minus, this is what you choose to ignore) of that solution. Then you reach the most important part, the points or aspects of a solution that are neither positive nor negative or you can't judge them or haven't judged them yet. There might be a high value hidden in these ideas that has not yet been discovered. That is exactly what you are looking for! So it is not a judgement exercise, it goes beyond judgement!

Moreover, one of the benefits of PMI is that people are easily convinced to participate as you are appealing to their expertise: they are asked their expert opinion on what is good, what is bad and what is interesting. And by doing a PMI they may change their minds and find a better solution among the interesting options.

It goes without saying that, should you be interested in a PMI or CAF session, the consultants of Improve Quality Services are ready to facilitate these sessions. And if you just want some more information on these topics, feel free to contact me directly.

This article is an article in the series about the versatile profession of requirements engineering. Every week a colleague of?Improve Quality Services?will share with the reader an aspect of requirements engineers from daily experience. Every article begins with a picture of a bridge. The bridge visualizes connecting two sides. In requirements engineering connecting different stakeholders assisting the stakeholders in collaboration and communication about requirements.

Articles published till date (articles 1 till 28 in Dutch):

1.?Requirements?(Piet de Roo, December 1, 2020)

2.?Shared Understanding?(Kaspar van Dam, December 8, 2020)

3.?Context en requirements structuur?(Patrick Duisters, December 15, 2020)

4.?Van Twin Peaks naar Twin Pines?(Patrick Duisters, December 22, 2020)

5.?Modellen om te bouwen?(Erwin Pasmans, January 5, 2021)

6.?Minimaal Modelleren?(Piet de Roo, January 12 2021)

7.?Begrip en Vertrouwen?(Benjamin Timmermans, January 19, 2021)

8.?En wat als de specialisten het niet met elkaar eens zijn??(Benjamin Timmermans, January 26, 2021)

9.?Waar zijn we nou helemaal mee bezig?!?(Erwin Pasmans, February 2, 2021)

10.?Soft skills? Keiharde wetenschap!?(Kaspar van Dam, February 9, 2021)

11.?… en nu enkele feiten: Requirement Attributen?(Patrick Duisters, February 16, 2021)

12.?Waarom, waarom, waarom, ...?(Piet de Roo, February 23, 2021)

13.?Een leven lang zorgen?(Erwin Pasmans, March 2, 2021)

14.?Casus: Requirements management bij een distributiecentrum in aanbouw?(Eduard Hartog, March 11, 2021)

15.?Iteratief versus Incrementeel?(Kaspar van Dam, March 16, 2021)

16.?Requirements of-the-shelf: geen maatwerk, geen requirements??(Erwin Pasmans, March 23, 2021)

17.?Creatief door constraints?(Piet de Roo, March 30, 2021)

18.?3 Amigo’s?(Patrick Duisters, April 13, 2021)

19.?4 Amigos (of meer?)?(Patrick Duisters, April 20, 2021)

20.?Requirements, de CoronaCheck-app en Fred Flintstone?(Benjamin Timmermans, April 28, 2021)

21.?Meer kapiteins op 1 schip (of staan de beste stuurlui aan wal)??(Erwin Pasmans, May 4, 2021)

22.?Hoe SMART is SMART??(Benjamin Timmermans, May 11, 2021)

23.?Jip en Janneke?(Piet de Roo, May 18, 2021)

24.?Laten we het simpel houden?(Patrick Duisters, May 25, 2021)

25.?Dilemma's?(Erwin Pasmans, June 1, 2021)

26.?Living Documentation Event 2021?(Kaspar van Dam, June 8, 2021)

27.?Non-functional Requirements?(Patrick Duisters, June 15, 2021)

28.?The Big Shift?(Kaspar van Dam, June 22, 2021)

29.?Why do we have these problems over and over again??(Erwin Pasmans, June 29, 2021)

30.?Non-functionals, who cares??(Benjamin Timmermans, July 6, 2021)

31.?Usability and UX, a revelation I had?(Benjamin Timmermans, July 13, 2021)

32.?How??(Piet de Roo, July 20, 2021)

33.?Requirements and design??(Erwin Pasmans, July 27, 2021)

34.?Tom's people skills to deal with the customers?(Piet de Roo, August 3, 2021)

35.?Requirements creep: the ideal pocketknife with 3000 functions?(Benjamin Timmermans, August 10, 2021)

36.?Requirements creep: good or bad??(Benjamin Timmermans, August 17, 2021)

37.?End with the begin in mind?(Piet de Roo, August 24, 2021)

38.?Requirements: Do we really need them??(Kaspar van Dam, August 31, 2021)

39.?Begin with the End in Mind?(Patrick Duisters, September 7, 2021)

40.?Solving the right problem?(Piet de Roo, September 14, 2021)

41.?Adapt requirements (and your process) to your development approach!?(Erwin Pasmans, September 21, 2021)

42.?ISTQB and IREB are joining forces?(Piet de Roo, September 28, 2021)

43.?New stakeholders?(Benjamin Timmermans, October 5, 2021)

44.?Just start over again?(Erwin Pasmans, October 12, 2021)

45.?Booking a desk at the office?(Piet de Roo, October 19, 2021)

46. Don't drive away in your prototypes (Erwin Pasmans, October 26, 2021)