MJ recently wrote about the Wise Fool, as a contrast to the Wisdom of Crowds. However, I’d like to ramble for a bit on why the Wise Fool is a great thing to have in a software development team.
Developers solve problems. This is their raison d’etre. If you have a technological itch that’s bugging you, a developer is the person who wants to scratch it. Developers have the answers to things. They like to be able to say “Oh yeah, I can fix that. No problem.” They’re movers and shakers, heavy lifters, the Intelligentsia. Developers rock.
It’s therefore an unusual trait in a developer for them to say “There’s a problem, and I can’t fix it.” Other developers will look down their noses, or gasp in astonishment to think that someone might betray the Brotherhood by making it publicly known for even an instant that there might be something that just isn’t known.
OK, I exaggerate, but you get the point.
Sometimes the most useful person in the project is the one who stands up and points and says “There’s something bad happening.” You don’t have to know what the root cause of the problem is, you don’t have to know how to fix it – you just have to spot the symptoms. And that courage should be cherished, because without it you can end up with a scenario where everyone blithely carries on doing things in a broken way because no-one had the courage to stand up and say it was broken, simply because they didn’t also have a solution.
Wise Fools sometimes only make themselves heard at retrospectives, which is one good reason to have them, and a great reason to have Heartbeat Retrospectives (a mini-retro, held at any time with any group of collaborators). Give those folks a chance to speak up and be heard, in a safe environment free from retribution or condemnation. In fact, I would go so far as to say that the safer your retrospective environment is, the more likely that you’ll get the benefit of a Fool’s Wisdom.
Anyway, I’ve rambled on a bit. Better stop. My grandda used to say “You can keep quiet and let the world think you’re a fool, or you can open your mouth and prove them all right.”