Curiosity is one of the most permanent and certain characteristics of a vigorous intellect.
Samuel Johnson
Curiosity is a double-edged sword for a development manager.
Curiosity leads people to ask "Why?" and "Why not?" and "What's this thing do?". Curiosity is the root of discovery and discovery is something a good developer should be doing on a regular basis.
Curiosity drives a developer to discover a "new" namespace in development frameworks like .NET or Java. It's the emotion that has a React developer playing with Next.js or Svelte or any of the other new JavaScript front-end development technologies. Curiosity drives change. It drives innovation. It can also drive a manager crazy.
A team, or team member, with a lot of curiosity can become distracted by the latest shiny thing. The latest message queue technology might be just the thing your team needs but your team might also just need to learn to use the current product in a more sophisticated manner. And while the source of a regularly recurring issue might be really interesting to track down, it should not come at the expense of items prioritized by Product Management.
A key challenge as a dev manager is to keep the curiosity at a manageable level. Shutting down explorations is a great way to kill motivation in a developer. But letting a deeply curious developer run amok investigating whatever seems interesting at the moment is a surefire way to ensure you don't meet your deliverables, accumulate tech debt, and bloat your tech stack.
When I have a deeply curious developer, I try to direct their curiosity in constructive ways. If there is an issue a new product purports to solve, I'll challenge them to first, establish the root of the current issue we're experiencing. Optimally, I'll tie this to performance goals or something similar. Generally, I'll ensure their investigation turns into documentation.
I work very hard to reinforce the value of their curiosity and communicate that I, too, see value in what they're looking at or I direct them to something related with more immediate value). If I can carve out time for a developer to investigate something, I'll do so; but I'll ensure the discovery is guided and purposeful.
Curiosity is a beautiful thing that can yield fantastic results but it must be directed, sometimes with some very hands-on mentoring.
Kommentare