Working on developing a product for a customer requires great focus. To ensure the best outcome for the product development process, you need good listening skills (to fully understand the customer’s needs), design abilities (to anticipate all difficulties and find ways to overcome them) and excellent organisational skills (so that work proceeds smoothly in the right direction).
Unfortunately, it sometimes happens that the chemistry of a project struggles to take off even when all the right ingredients exist. In the French language, this kind of situation without no obvious way out, takes the lovely name of impasse.
Of course, difficult moments can always arise. Moments when the walls of the office seem to close up on you, making you feel caged in. Moments in which the brain seems to be running on empty, stuck in a loop of thoughts that clash against each other pointlessly. Moments when fatigue takes the upper hand, giving rise to unpleasant situations, even among the most close-knit teams.
What should you do when you reach an impasse situation?
One learning from my long-standing experience in developing products at Tratter is that taking regular break boosts creativity.
Getting up from your desk, a change of scenery, creating a situation around you that is different from the usual are small measures that can help people and teams look at things from a different angle, finding ways out where there seemed to be none.
The good fortune of working at Tratter is that of having large and comfortable spaces in which to take a break when work becomes strenuous or overly difficult. And the large terrace is definitely my favourite among them.
Overlooking the vineyards of the Adige valley, it is the perfect place for clearing your thoughts whist admiring this unique spectacle of nature. Whenever my team are stuck with an unsolvable dilemma, this is where we gather to find a way out.
Brainstorming in the open air helps us to uncover that minor detail that suddenly clears those seemingly insurmountable obstacles, and propels the project forward.
