Habr, let's storm

We have written almost 1800 articles for our blog on Habré: professional author's translations, series, articles, fan content, special projects. From the outside, it may seem that this is very simple: I found a good idea and wrote it, found a cool post and translated. Business something. But those who wrote on Habr are not laughing in Forbes: it is important to conduct fact-checking, check the correctness of all the wording, select the title and image, typeset, release and F5, F5, F5 in anticipation of pluses minuses, comments, bug reports in PM. And you know what is the most interesting? Even after five years, these sensations do not let go: every time as for the first time.



In general, ideas start to dry up. Therefore, we ask you to help us.

I want to help right away

Since we want to give you something useful in return, in this short article we will share the coolest ways to generate ideas in a team. We are sure that this information will be useful for a company of any profile to find new product ideas, features, topics for publications and even ways to prepare a corporate party.

Bonus Track: 8 Proven Idea Generation Techniques

▍ Brainstorming

An eternally lively and invariably working methodology for finding new ideas. It works as simply as possible: 2-12 people gather (more this is a bazaar), one of them becomes a moderator who writes down all the ideas and makes sure that there are no attempts to discuss, criticize or approve other people's ideas. All communication is a chaotic stream of thoughts: delusional, abstruse, complex, simple, expensive to execute. All recorded ideas are collected in a list and sent to colleagues for voting. The selected decisions are put into operation and discussed in detail in terms of reality, timing, labor costs, cost, resources, etc. The trick of this approach is that no one hesitates to express ideas, because such rules of the game and everyone behaves a little crazy, and at the same time spur the thinking of colleagues.Among the proposed ideas, there are always 3-5 suitable and one "golden" thought. 

▍ Reverse brainstorming

Even cooler and more workable thing. 2-12 people get together and begin to discuss not ideas, but counter-ideas - that is, what exactly should NOT work out. As a result, the most risky and unfavorable outcomes are eliminated in the collective conscious and the team has a valuable vision of what they really want. When bad ideas are deliberately excluded, good ideas are sought more successfully. Unlike brainstorming, you do not need to vote for failures and risks, it is enough to notify all participants in the processes about them. If desired, you can rank the risks by the likelihood of occurrence and the depth of the threat.

▍ Think synthetically

Imagine you've written 300 articles on JavaScript. Dead end. And you certainly need a few more and it is not clear what to do with it. Spread the table (by the way, columns 2 and 3 can contain any questions: why, why, how, with whom, who, from whom ... ):



And now you "walk" with your eyes through the columns:  

• JavaScript in the car when the covidla runs out
• Front end on a table in the middle ages
• Application in the office at night

Nonsense? At first glance, absolute. But we are now a bit of an alchemist, and therefore we will rub the Philosopher's Stone and synthesize:

• JavaScript: Use in Developing Cars Connected to Everything
• How programming languages ​​change after the pandemic and how remote work will affect them
• If the frontend worked in the middle ages: comic reasoning about interfaces
• Benefits of nightly builds and the most common JavaScript mistakes that only a sleepy programmer can make

Already interesting topics that you can tackle and which sound uncommon. That is, we synthesized them by combining unexpected properties of surrounding objects.



Synthetic thinking is based on such tables, which starts to work very cool after 2-3 iterations.

▍ Ideas around us

"Load" into your core the thought of the necessary task and go to do your thing: sleep, read, cook, ride a bike, climb mountains, weed beds. This thought will revolve in your head and the decision will come completely unexpectedly. It will be a real "Eureka!" This method has an important drawback: it only works for one, local idea. The method is not suitable for several solutions in parallel.   

▍ Stress Sprint

Great idea for a remote or partially remote team. The method works on the basis of positive stress. Each employee is given 3-5 minutes in touch (maybe less), during which he must sketch absolutely any ideas in the right direction: new features, ideas for design or interface, etc. No one interrupts, comments, criticizes or approves. The conference is recorded, all ideas are then put into a list and then it is processed according to the same principles as the brainstorming protocol. It is better if it will be an unexpected survey of employees, for example, during the usual call - in a stressful situation, the brain is activated and sometimes worthy ideas happen.

▍ Competition within the company

A good old fashioned way for solving large-scale, project problems or small work issues that require creativity. A competition is announced, the prize can be three pizzas for the winning department or one day off for an employee or his department / group. Employees propose ideas that have already been thought out, selected by them, which are considered by the process holders and the leader. By the way, it is very important that the idea eventually gets a real implementation - this motivates the rest of the employees to take an active part in ideas competitions in the future. 

▍ Mind maps and stickers

When you use mind-cards and virtual boards with stickers to design ways of solving problems, construct connections, create dependencies, a more global, extensive understanding of the subject of discussion comes. Thus, precise, verified, well-engineered ideas are formed. This method is great for introverts, and is also useful for the whole company: prepared cards can be fumbled and all colleagues will share a constructive perception of the problem. The disadvantage of this approach is the long preparation time, as well as the need to master a new application to create such structures.

▍ And signature: anonymous

The easiest and at the same time suitable for any employee way: create a file, for example, in Google Docs, and employees anonymously or non-anonymously fill it all out, supplementing and referring to other people's ideas in the comments. This is convenient, since each employee will be able to work with the file in the most free time and not worry that the current work tasks will run out. As a result, you will receive a large file with many balanced opinions and discussions - all that remains is to process it. One caveat: set a deadline before which you need to work with the file, and then close the document for editing, otherwise the process will take weeks.



Well, in conclusion, a few tips: combine several methods, work as a team and one by one, try to storm on an empty stomach and in a cool room. These little things work great.

And now the request itself 

If you have ideas for cool topics that are not covered on Habré or ideas for series of articles and special projects, fill out the form and let us know. If you can implement your idea yourself, great: we will quickly review it, agree on it and pay honestly. If you are interested in reading about something, but nowhere is there complete and valuable information, leave your thematic request or idea - we will try to find an expert author. And in general - write any ideas, this is the meaning of brainstorming (you can also scold a blog - only, mind you, constructively).



▍ I want to help - link to the form We



kindly ask you to fill out the form , and not write in the comments. You can also send an idea in private messages to our blog editor .





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