Brainstorming Video
Video Transcript
Prepare thoroughly for your brainstorming session so that you get the most out of it.
If you've ever had to solve a problem at work, you've probably tried brainstorming. It can be an effective way of coming up with ideas and creative solutions. But brainstorming needs to be done correctly for it to be successful.
Be sure to start your problem solving in a structured, analytical way, so you know you've considered the essentials. Only then move on to brainstorming.
Brainstorming encourages people to think in a free and open way with no restrictions. As a result, they often generate more possibilities than they would using just a structured approach.
Brainstorming can be done alone or in a group. Sometimes, individual brainstorming produces more ideas than the group version. This may be because people feel less inhibited when they're on their own, they're not worried about other people's opinions, and they've got time to think. But if group brainstorming is done well, with effective chairing of people from a range of backgrounds, you'll likely get more diverse ideas. Just don't make your group too big. Five to seven people is best.
To start your brainstorming session, find a comfortable, quiet place where you won't be disturbed. Ask everyone to bring a pen and a notepad. Appoint one person to record all the ideas you generate where everyone can see them, such as on a whiteboard. Explain clearly that the group's goal is to come up with as many ideas as possible without thinking about them too much. You'll evaluate them later.
Define the problem you want to solve, then give everyone some time to write down their ideas. Now ask each person to share their ideas, and use those suggestions to generate other ideas. This should be a fun and creative time, so be sure to discourage people from criticizing or judging one another.
Once the brainstorming session is finished, you'll have lots of ideas to work with. Now is the time to evaluate them, so that you can find the best solution to the problem. We have lots of analysis and decision-making tools to help you do this.
For more information about brainstorming and our supporting tools, see the article that accompanies this video.
What is your motivation to do programming?
Is this because you have good math and you could use this skill with programming?
There other ways to use math like accountancy or audit and engineering.
However if you mean the math element is a strength and you want to quickly add extra items to your skill set then math and programming do fit together.
Programing does need team interaction skills but if you want to fit in the team and have a manager or leader to develop your team skills or improve your own personal or team skills this will need you to use your strengths to develop these skills while doing something that interests you.
You can develop not only your math skills but use these strengths to develop your other skills although you see these at present as a skill to be developed and not a skill that is immediately available or useable by you in a team setting.
If this is not one of your motivations or is useable in the work setting, you might want to find a way to become confident and position your skills to improve what you feel about team work.
A team lead might want to use your math or programming skills but will still want to find ways to use your team interaction skills and use of your valuable team member skills but will want to understand what or why you feel you feel you have no team or self interaction skills to use with the other team members.
A team needs it's members to interact together, software development is no different although the specialist skills required to develop software might need social and interaction skills rather than just technical skills, to be useful to each other you will need to become more confident about positioning your team member skills to be able to interact with other team members.
Remember you need to find ways to develop these skills although your main efforts might be towards developing the programming skills to do the job.
Is there a particular issue you feel you need more development with interacting or is this a question about confidence or the positioning of your technical or social skills?
If this is the people or team skills you want to develop further while being able to focus mostly on the technical skills needed to develop software, you will need to consider how you position these skills to the work area?
Happy to offer more help if I can do so...
Bigk
I have done my own SWOT analysis.
One of my strengths is math, and my weakness is social interaction and copywriting.
So I think could software building or programming be the "right brand" and "righ career" for me?
I have (of course) used computer, but I have no experience or education in software building or programming. (And of course this is the reason why I ask this question).
You've obviously got a good grasp already of how the results of a SWOT analysis can provide their own solution - as you say:
How do we use the strengths with the opportunities, strengths to beat the threats etc..?
A good way to start figuring this out is to use TOWS analysis which will show you how to figure this out. Our article on TOWS analysis is here: http://mindtools.com/community/pages/ar ... STR_89.php
Best wishes
Helena