How can we develop a Critical Thinking Mindset?
Critical thinking skills can be extremely beneficial for software engineers, product developers, and people in many other fields. It’s about approaching new information with humble curiosity and skepticism. Think for yourself and ask good questions to help you make informed decisions. In broad strokes, some of the critical thinking questions I like to ask are:
- How do we know we’re solving the right problem?
- How do we know we’re solving the problem in the right way? (i.e. balancing rigor and efficiency given our understanding of the problem and constraints)
- How can we determine the root cause if we don’t know the sources of our problem?
- How can we break down the main question into smaller questions that we can investigate further?
- How do we structure work to evaluate hypotheses once we have one or more?
- What shortcuts might we take if we’re under time constraints without jeopardizing our analytical rigor around the question?
- Is the evidence strong enough to support the conclusions?
- How do we know when we’ve finished? When is a solution “acceptable”?
- How do I clearly and logically communicate the solution to all stakeholders?