[Sean Conolly]

"William Sommerwerck" wrote in message
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"Sean Conolly" wrote in message ...

"William Sommerwerck" wrote in message
...

snipping an interesting story worth reading for those inclined

Thanks for posting that - I enjoyed that.
I'm close to that level myself, close enough to make a nice living
as the go-to guy for all the really hard problems.

That's great to hear!

In addition to "asking good questions", what other useful approaches to
problem-solving have you found?

Number one skill: develop a pedantic to nigh on fanatical desire to separate
facts from speculation. Facts are rare precious gems because once proven
they can be relied on. Everything else is speculation with various weights
of probability. Something may be highly probable to the point that it's safe
to move forward on the assumption that it's true, but I still won't call it
a fact.

Having assessed what is known and what we suspect, look for something which
can be easily tested and can rule in or out a number of other
possibilities - basically to figure out what area does the problem live. You
can figure out what the positive and negative results might be, and end up
with something completely unexpected that's not consistent with any theory.
That's OK - a result is a result - it's more data to factor into the next
round of tests. Sometimes you get an 'impossible' result that makes no sense
at all - when you find yourself saying 'that can't be right', it means
you've built your understanding on some bad data somewhere, and you have to
find it (much like your detectors).

That works OK for systems. Given patience and thoroughness you can debug
anything from a car to a nuclear reactor. It's just a matter of
understanding the system well enough to figure out the right things to
check.

Systems involving people are much more difficult. When I've been sent to an
unhappy customer site where we were in real trouble, I have to take time to
assess all of the players and their feelings and opinions. Then I revert to
my military training: find the center of resistance and try to move it.
There's always one person who is sort of the focal point of negative
perception, and if you can swing that person the rest will fall in line, or
at least become a lot easier to deal with.

Sean