The Art of Problem Solving*

A presentation at WordCamp Bristol in May 2019 in Bristol, UK by Ben Everard

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The Art of Problem Solving * By Ben Everard

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Ben, why the f *** are you talking about this?

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Impact: Opportunity Enjoyment Money Time Stress

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Impact: Opportunity Enjoyment Money Time Stress

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This isn’t just for our work problems.

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[1]

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Brexit

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Before we start…

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Read Consume Contribute

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Five steps: 1. Discover 2. Understand 3. Solve 4. Report 5. Share

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  1. Discover

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  1. Discover Proactively discover our problems.

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  1. Discover Embrace problems while they’re cheap to solve.

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  1. Discover Think about the future now, it’ll be an investment you wished you had made.

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  1. Discover Don’t hide from our problems.

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  1. Discover Document our problems.

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  1. Discover Prioritise our problems.

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[2]

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[2]

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[2]

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[3]

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  1. Understand

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  1. Understand Know the problem.

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  1. Understand “Very little will cost you more than having to do something twice” [4]

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  1. Understand How do we understand our problem? We ask questions We consult experts We speak to users We challenge assumptions We challenge our bias We use data

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  1. Understand Is this even a problem that needs solving?

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  1. Understand

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“If I had more time, I would have written a shorter letter.” [5]

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  1. Solve

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  1. Solve Keep it simple!

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  1. Solve Layering complexity will either become a resource drain or a failure, pick one.

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[5]

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  1. Solve Test. Test. Test.

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  1. Report

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  1. Report Things go wrong, and it’s important to be able report on what happened.

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  1. Report It’s a strength to report to a stakeholder how a problem occurred, not a weakness.

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  1. Share

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  1. Share The problem is solved… are we done?

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  1. Share [6]

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  1. Share

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The Art of Problem Solving *

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Cheers, drive! @_beneverard noti.st/beneverard

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References 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. https://www.space.com/24835-spacesuit-water-leak-nasa-investigation.html https://blog.ajsmart.com/how-to-prioritise-your-tasks-and-reduce-stress-at-work-acb352df3ec9 https://www.thesprintbook.com/ https://youtu.be/JnlxXTbGwj4?t=1065 https://quoteinvestigator.com/2012/04/28/shorter-letter/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F98lUtez3EU https://twitter.com/lurkmoophy/status/1090936204047142912 Colophon Typeface: Utopia Std Regular