The golden rule in improv comedy is, Say "Yes...and!" The basic principle is to never negate your collaborators (Yes) and to always build off the last statement (and!).

 

 

"Did you see that giraffe walking down the highway?"

"Yes, and I think it turned into the Pinkberry parking lot...

  must like froyo."

 

 

A talented improv group can take a single word offered from the audience and create a two-hour performance by using the "Yes...and!" framework. The performers' excitement is palpable. You can see them in real-time accepting the challenge, exploring ideas, expanding on concepts, battling the fear of failure, and then circling back to the theme for continuity. It's exhilarating -- and a bit exhausting too.

 

Engineers, surprisingly, work much the same. When faced with a difficult requirement an engineer will accept the challenge and systematically attack the problem. "Yes, it can be built." This step in and of itself is not the issue. The evaluation of the requirement is critical to the process. However, it's the next step that separates good engineers from great ones.

 

 

Learning to Say "Yes...but!"

 

I love working with highly-skilled engineers. You know the type: critical thinker, loves different technologies, something of a tinkerer, great at building stuff. It's a bit of a simplification, but you get the point. Design sessions are like drugs to these types. Throw complicated problems at them and they dig in. "Yes, and what if it connected to...Yes, and have you heard of...Yes, and I think we could make it fit by..." Sparks fly. The room is electric. The world's problems will be solved.

 

But the requirement wasn't to solve the world's problems.

 

The key difference between a good engineer and a great one is the ability to deliver business value in context. It's not the ability to hook four disparate platforms together or refactor using cutting edge technology. It's not even developing an efficient, concise solution. It's understanding the context, empathizing with the customer, and learning to live at the intersections of desirability, feasibility, and viability.

 

A great engineer will follow their Yes with a but. "Yes, but if we do that, you understand that it will impact users by...Yes, but who would use that feature...Yes, but it will take six months to build that." This approach asks more of the engineer. There's innate conflict in the process -- a dynamic that can be uncomfortable. Business analysis skills are needed to effectively separate a want from a need. And most importantly, the engineer must empathize with the customer, the user, or any other stakeholder that could interact with the solution. None of those skills are listed on a typical engineer's resume.

 

A great engineer is not a great improv comic -- at least not in the office. As fun as "Yes..and!" can be, it's the "Yes...but!" that delivers top notch solutions.

 

 

 

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Mike Dickens is a SharePoint technical lead and Agile practitioner who has led or participated in every phase of the implementation lifecycle for government, military, and non-profit clients. His strength is analyzing the business need, surveying the platform, and designing an effective solution that minimizes technical debt.

 

Over the last nine years, Mike has built a career to face the growing complexity of IT systems. Whether it was a focus on root cause analysis at Ernst & Young, business process re-engineering and automation at ManTech, or scalability and system architecture at CACI, his skillset is in constant expansion. Additionally, as projects became more complex, Mike identified an opportunity to strengthen his management skills. He was an early adopter and implementer of the Agile methodology, receiving a Certified Scrum Master certification in 2009. Mike later became one of the first in the country to achieve the PMI-ACP (Agile Certified Practitioner), also known as the Agile PMP. To round out his management foundation, he is a certified Project Management Professional (PMP).

 

Mike is an avid Washington Wizards fan that has learned, begrudgingly, to deal with the annual failures of the local NBA team. His wife is teaching him French while he is teaching her patience. And most weekends he can be seen riding around Arlington, VA on a vintage Peugeot bicycle.