Software debugging Part 2 : Six thinking hat approach
On the last article I had talked about knowing your error before solving them. The previous approach I use as an initial quick rectification method. If that doesn’t work out then I use the six thinking hat approach. This type of thinking I use for errors which I have never seen before or for those errors where solution is not known.
In the book “How google works?”- Eric Schmidt has quoted that for every meeting google wants the unbiased data first and then decisions are made according to that. The process almost repeats in every field and the most descriptive of the technique is called “Six thinking hats” which was coined by Edward De Bono.
Coming right to the point. The six thinking hats is a concept in which you put on six thinking hats to solve a problem. Now what are the hats? White — List facts, Black — Cautions, Red — Feelings, Yellow — Benefits, Green — Creativity, and Blue — Process. I would really like the reader to go through the hats in details. I think this article is a good start.
I got this image from that article.
Here I will introduce my flow of hat
I follow a pattern,
Blue — Planning on what to solve. Choose what you want to do to rectify the error. I have put my usual plannings mixed below.
White — Get the available error messages and supporting warnings straight
Green — Derive possible solutions even if it is a weird one.
Black — List down its disadvantages
Yellow — List down its advantages
Iterate the Green, Black and Yellow hats for 5 min and not more than that. The 5 min is important otherwise you will be stuck in a loop.
Red — Pick one based on your intuition. This is a crucial step. Because getting the best solution is a rare chance. So move with the current best for now. If you are still looking for the best then most probably you won’t write a single line of code. So start fixing the error with solution at hand.
The approach is a nice way to move forward. Most probably after the initial hat thinking new set of information about the error or your software may pop up and you can use that repeating the thinking hat process.
The series will continue Part3…
Previous part Part 1