I came here to write this, and also to say that on a software team, for example, where the problem is complex, no one person may have a well rounded enough or deep enough grasp of the problem, goals, limitations, etc. to come up with an optimal solution on their own. This is why we have businesses in the first place, to organize teams in a greater-than-the-sum-of-its-parts kind of way. A very basic example of this might be a UI designer coming up with a number of potential interface ideas for a particular problem users are experiencing, and an engineering choosing the design which will cost the least dev hours. Iterating on sketches of such potential solutions will almost certainly get to a better solution than the designer just making a choice their own favorite design and lobbing it over the wall to eng.
Not to dismiss the psychological safety point the article makes, which i believe is very valid.
I think we use the term "brain storming" in different ways, engineering teams coming together to flesh out an idea is often nothing like a "brainstorming" session. Engineering often tends to do "cooperative brain leveraging" :)
Yeah, brainstorming has put a bad name on collaborating next to a whiteboard with pens and post-its.
Brainstorming tries to achieve an unstructured creative session whereas engineering teams are trying to flesh out a structured plan to a complex problem.
Not all whiteboarding in a group is brainstorming. The former usually results in tremendous added value while with the latter I agree it's mostly pointless.
I’ve been building software for 20 years, and in my experience good ideas come from anywhere, especially on a high functioning teams where everyone is bought in. Engineers in particular often come up with great leftfield solutions, as they know what’s going on behind the scenes and can find way to leverage that knowledge.
I think this article might be something a litmus test for determining if you believe in such a thing as a functional software (not just engineering) _team_ or not.
Not to dismiss the psychological safety point the article makes, which i believe is very valid.