Using Trailhead To Resolve Unknown Unknowns

According to my Auntie Pat Tern, the only trouble with my cousin Tim Toady is that "like every teenager, he don't know what he don't know.  And that wouldn't be so bad if his teachers were better at knowing what he don't know."  So I took a look at the code in my org to see if I could pinpoint what it is that the developers don't know.

Luckily, the Trailhead team is great at foreseeing what it is that people don't know about Salesforce and have created a Trail for that, no matter what that is.  And while the developers might find the Apex trails on their own, they might not recognize that there is more about Salesforce they need to understand.  In fact, there is an entire Trail on the Salesforce Advantage, the core technology that differentiates Salesforce from other CRM systems and other development platforms.

Learn, or review, Salesforce Technology Basics
with the new Trailhead module.

One developer expressed concerns about "the Governor's limits", which indicates to me that they need to better understand multitenancy and performance.  Another expressed concern about Salesforce firewalls and security breaches, which indicates they need to learn about Salesforce security standards.  A third developer suggested we build custom objects for storing employee contact data and build content management and customer service solutions from scratch, which meant they need to learn more about fast app development with Salesforce customizations and third-party apps.

Happily, Salesforce has a new Trailhead module to help my group know more about all these topics, Salesforce Technology Basics.  Of course my developers are a lot like my cousin Tim Toady, they know they are a smart bunch but they often don't realize that there are things they don't know.  It's the Dunning-Kruger Effect, the unknown unknowns.

For those who are deeply familiar with Salesforce, Trailhead can help you avoid the "curse of knowledge" tendency to believe that if you know it then most people must know it as well.  Trailhead modules are thorough, starting with the basics and moving to more challenging information.  And they are entertaining, so anyone with a smattering of knowledge will find familiar topics fun to review and new topics informative.

With Trailhead, you can avoid the problem Auntie Pat Tern described for cousin Tim Toady, the unknown unknowns as well as the curse of knowledge.  Just encourage your team to earn Trailhead badges, which you can review in their Salesforce Community Profile pages, to bring the team up to speed even when you, or they, think they know what they need to know already.