I think most developers will agree with the below remarks...
Why, oh, why do users keep raising issues to developer’s like: “It doesn’t work, can you please check it?”, and just leave it at that? No explanation, no example, nothing…
To all these users I would like to say:
We REALLY want to help, we truly do. But please, please, please just give us the information we need, to help you! Do not drop the question and expect us to be able to read your minds. We can debug a program, but we cannot debug you. When raising an issue, please add a clear description of what steps were taken and what the problem is.
- What happened and what was the expected result?
- Which transaction did you use?
- What message was returned?
- When did this happen?
- Can the issue be repeated? How?
Be as clear as you can be! It may take a bit of extra effort at the start, but in the end it will save us all a lot of time.
Please guide us through the steps with patience, because we are NOT functional people and we do not (usually) know the proper business way to do what you normally do. What is obvious to you, is not obvious to us. We may not even know the right transaction… And we do not go through the screens you use.
We are not trying to frustrate you by asking all the questions we ask, how silly they may seem.
We just want to help! REALLY!
Okay, now I probably have developers agreeing with me on this. Having not enough information is frustrating and makes it difficult to help efficiently. The reason for me pointing at the users, is only done because developers will recognize them as a known problem. If only we could work without users... But this blog is not aimed at users, nor written for users. It is written for developers.
Let us turn it around and let it backfire...
Now, if you are a developer and you recognize this problem (you do, don’t you?), then have a look at how developers post on SCN… I see many questions, by developers, to developers, in the above mentioned user-way.
Developers keep raising issues to developer’s like: “It doesn’t work, can you please check it?”, and just leave it at that. No explanation, no example, nothing…
To all these developers I would like to say:
We REALLY want to help, we truly do. But please, please, please just give us the information we need to help you! Do not drop the question and expect us to be able to read your minds. We can debug a program, but we cannot debug you. When raising an issue, please add a clear description of what stpes were taken and what the problem is.
- What happened and what was the expected result?
- Which transaction did you use?
- What message was returned?
- When did this happen?
- Can the issue be repeated? How?
Be as clear as you can be! It may take a bit of extra effort at the start, but in the end it will save us all a lot of time.
Please guide us through the steps with patience, because we are NOT sitting next to you and we do not (usually) know the what you did. What is obvious to you, is not obvious to us. We may not even know the right transaction… And we do not go through the screens you use.
We are not trying to frustrate you by asking all the questions we ask, how silly they may seem.
We just want to help! REALLY!