Vision. I often heard this term, read about it, though I knew what this is. I thought, when there is a person in charge, who is a highly skilled engineer, he can see what others can not just because of his engineering capabilities and the fact he goes thinking deeply about the problems (not only existing ones, he is also in a constant search for the new ones). Apparently, it's not that simple.
It turned out, vision is not a consequence of engineering skills but something very different. It's an extraordinary ability to see the future, a hypothetical future of a product evolution. By seeing this, a revisionary can drive product development in leaps, thus making it a revolutionary progression.
It is important to realize this is not "just" about development time (or, the availability of shortcuts). Evaluation is all around us. We evaluate everything we are doing in order to learn from it and adapt. Others evaluate our work in order to figure out if they want to invest in it. Thus, being able to leap forward gives you an instant advantage in terms of evaluation outcome, which transforms the benefit of having a vision from quantity (of time) to quality.
I faced the vision problem when tried to design a large system, in collaboration within a team. I realized (for the first time) that it's not the engineering skills that we lack, but rather a clear vision over where we are going. It doesn't even matter if you are an architect, lead developer, or the god himself. If you got the vision, you'll be heard.
Aside from being mysterious, vision is still a human skill. I wonder if it can be trained, like any other human skill we have. What kind of activity would that be? I don't believe that by just thinking and brainstorming we get any better in visioning in general, we merely dig harder at a specific problem instead. There must be something more generic. Perhaps, playing the music?..
