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Understanding Critique
We’ve all been there...
Whether you’re a developer, project manager, designer, business analyst, etc.
it’s more than likely that you’ve been in a meeting where the topic of “design”
has come up explicitly or otherwise. If you’re on a project that involves the
creation of something – a tool, a service, a product, a brochure, a logo,
whatever it may be – you’re going to be involved in conversations about how
it works, what it can do, what it contains, how it looks and so on.
Collaboration and coordination are critical elements in the success of projects
in most (if not all) modern organizations. There isn’t a single individual who
will be responsible for coming up with an idea, designing it, building it, selling
it and supporting it. Instead these responsibilities and the expertise that come
with them are divided amongst a variety of contributors who each bring their
knowledge to the team. S o we need to work together, combining our skills and
expertise. And to work together, we need to talk with each other. We need to
discuss what it is we’re creating, why we’re creating it and how it will all
come together.
But as many of us have witnessed, these conversations can turn painful. In
most cases, as these discussions go wrong, the worst they do is delay progress.
They seem to go nowhere as people disagree and argue and team members
walk away not sure what to do next. And so measures need to be taken to plot
next steps. While individual instances like this may not seem like a huge deal,
it’s the culmination of discussions that go this way that really impacts a team.