I just went digging through some old blog posts of mine, and a found a few worth reposting. Here’s an excerpt of one from early 2004…

A colleague of mine gave a presentation yesterday about brainstorming techniques. For example, he talked about how an initial pool of ideas can be built up in the generation phase by pushing the boundaries, piggy-backing on the previous ideas, and inverting or negating the previous ideas.

I will never forget the first time I tried it. I was using a technique called “20 Answers” which is essentially a way to do a brainstorm single-handedly. I started with a blank piece of paper and wrote my question at the top, “How can I get this bleepin’ report-printing framework to fill in the calculated totals I need on the cover sheet at the beginning of the report, even though the figures to be totaled haven’t been processed yet?” (That was back in my C/PM days, and the tool I was using didn’t know how to make a preview pass when generating a report.) Some of the possible answers that immediately came to mind were:

1. Somehow pre-calculate the totals

2. Write a post-processor to fix up the cover page

3. Bypass the framework and write the whole report in Print statements

But they were obviously too complicated. So, I loosened the constraints and brainstormed some more…

8. Find another framework and rewrite the whole app

9. Write my own framework from scratch

Of course, those were even more complicated. Eventually, I started getting really silly and downright contrarian. I thought to myself, what if I don’t try to answer the question at all? Or that I only answer part of the question? That generated a few more possibilities…

15. Perhaps I could convince the customer that they don’t really need the totals on the cover sheet?

16. Perhaps they’d settle for a summary page at the end instead of a cover sheet in front?

And then it finally hit me. Who says the cover sheet has to actually come out of the printer first? Thus:

19. Print a summary sheet at the end that looks like a cover page and have the clerk move that page to the front before mailing the report.

Walla! I had struggled with that problem for a few days before I brought out the “big guns” and went through the 20-Answers exercise. It’s true what they say about the power of getting things down on paper to stop the mental “looping.”