Imagine you have an 💡explo task. Your team started a fresh
TypeScript project, and now you want to add a unit test framework there. There is no default unit testing framework in the company at this moment, so you decided to create an explo task and research your options. What would you do?I bet you will start by exploring the field. Which frameworks are available? Which is used the most? Are they still maintainable? + other questions. After some days, you have the list, and you even tried to play with some of them. The time for explo is running out, you need to wrap up. Now your colleague comes and tells you — have you
bun test? You did not. Now you need either to start over and compare bun test with everything you've explored before or say that it's out of scope.What did your colleague just do? They played into the divergence phase. Every creative task we do either individually or as a group consists of two phases — divergence (exploration, where we create new ideas) and convergence (where we try to come to the conclusion). And each of our actions and the actions of our counterparts can contribute to one of these processes.
When you contribute to the divergence, you postpone the decision, when you contribute to convergence, you bring it closer. Usually, there are more people who contribute to divergence — they suggest new ideas, say that maybe you shall try X or look at the issue from a different angle. Divergence is fun and does not require any accountability. These are all valid suggestions, and they might be right, but there is one but — business does not profit from pure divergence. Business may profit when we take decisions, measure the results, and see if that decision has brought us closer to our goal.
Be the one who contributes to the convergence phase. Yes, we need a reasonable divergence period, we want to have different ideas to choose from. But there shall be moment when we say — enough, now let's see what best can we get out of what we have. After that point we need to streamline our processes, thinking, and actions towards the decision making.
▪️ This logic can be applicable to anything — meeting, explo task, experiments. Do not forget that everything shall have an end, this helps us to progress. Bring convergence.
