A Generational Shift in Solving Issues

When assisting younger millennials in fixing bugs, issues, and roadblocks, how should a Product Owner best utilize their network of experts?

First and foremost, I am also a member of the Millennial generation. Specifically, I’m an “elder millennial,” to borrow a phrase from Iliza Shlesinger. This is not an attempt to start a fight or stir up controversy; rather, it is a personal account of a problem I faced and how I overcame it.

When I was still a software engineer, I encountered numerous bugs, issues, and impediments. When I inevitably run into one, I have learned from my more experienced coworkers to find an expert right away who can help me solve the problem at hand. Alternatively, if I am unable to identify an expert in a specific area, I have also learned that reaching out to my Product Owner is very beneficial. POs are well-connected with stakeholders who possess the necessary skills and knowledge to help me overcome obstacles. By closely working with POs, I can leverage their network and identify the appropriate person who can offer me the necessary guidance and expertise.

Now that I’m the Product Owner in charge of a team of engineers' backlog, I’ve noticed a few things. First, all of my engineers are younger millennials, and second, the issues that they are dealing with are a lot more complex than what I had encountered before. I thought it was just an experience or training gap, but as we worked together more, I saw that I was lucky to have brilliant engineers on my team. However, when they bring up issues during our stand ups and retrospectives, it’s always a lot more complicated than what I was expecting.

During one of our meetings, I finally realized what the difference was when one of our engineers explained an issue to me. After they told me what was going on, but before I was able to get a word in to clarify something, the engineer started listing the solutions that they had tried to solve the problem. Each of these solutions had specific drawbacks and a well-considered explanation for why it wouldn’t solve our initial problem.

I expected them to try to solve problems before requesting assistance, but not like this. Looking back at our previous impediments, it appears that almost always, a younger millennial will opt to try each solution out and explore the problem space before asking for help. It seems as though they would always opt to prepare beforehand because they expect to be questioned about why they did not do this or that before reaching out for support.

At first, this may sound good. Why wouldn’t an engineer try to figure things out before seeking assistance? However, the end result is typically a worker who never asks for help. In the rare cases when they do ask for support, their question is incredibly nuanced and difficult to solve. Even in the cases where they didn’t ask for help, they may have spent more time and effort exploring the problem space than simply sending a message to a domain expert.

This situation can cause a lot of frustration and confusion in the workplace as the engineer spends hours trying to figure out a problem that could have been solved in a few minutes by simply asking someone else.

When I realized the difference between my working style and that of my younger colleagues, I confided with a mentor and asked if they had seen this behavior before. We learned that colleagues from the generation before us, or those who worked primarily with the last generation, have encountered similar issues with the upcoming millennial generation. We kept talking about this problem, and when we brought in more coworkers and some younger engineers, we came up with a solution.

We should look at a problem (bug, issue, impediment, etc.) as if it were a tree, and its solutions would be its stems and leaves. Younger millennials tend to look at the whole tree, going through the “stems” or solutions that they can see. When they finally ask for help, they will list the problems they have run into while trying to solve the initial issue.

The mistake that we made before was to focus on these stems. It’s easy to pick a possible solution that the engineer tried but did not work and find a specialist in that domain who can help. If that stem still had blockers, choose another stem and seek out another expert.

What has proven to be more effective is to drill down to the root of the tree. Find out the underlying issue first, and then look for a specialist in that domain instead. When an expert with knowledge about the initial problem collaborates with an engineer who has explored the possible solutions, we have found that they almost always come up with the best possible solution. All of the initial work performed by the younger engineer is not wasted because it provides the expert with additional context. This kind of workflow makes it easier to find a solution to a problem and reduces the time and resources needed to do so.

In summary, younger millennials' problem-solving methods differ from what we are used to. In order to properly assist them in dealing with these issues, we must also change our approach. If we continue to connect our engineers directly to the experts that can solve their immediate issue, they will just come back to us if they encounter a blocker and propose another solution. This will lead to another expert (and another blocker, etc.) until the issue is finally solved. Instead of doing this iterative cycle, we should first identify the underlying issue and then locate a specialist in that problem area. Based on our observations, this approach leverages the work of our younger engineers, is more efficient, and delivers significant results.

I hope what I’ve learned is useful to everyone else, and if you’ve had similar experiences or have alternative solutions, please don’t hesitate to contact me. Hanggang sa muli!

Note: This was first published as a LinkedIn article.