-> VERY IMPORTANT <-

How to solve a technical problem in any scale?

Keep Calm:
Keep calm and focus. The first and the most important factor of solving a problem is to get a grip on yourself and get confident and focused. They are excited, angry or maybe out of control. If you get angry too, or excited, solving the problem will get more time than you would think of. Believe you me!

Truthify:
Is the problem explained is really the problem that has happened?
Most of the time problems are explained in a non-technical, wrong way! You are responsible to question him/her to see what actually has happened? You are the detective of the crime scene.

Isolation:
Is there any possibilty to isolate the problem from the sorroundings. Finding the real problem when different metrics affect the result will guide to a wrong path. For example if it is said that emails are not sent, try to just send email from mail server to see if everything is working, put aside your web application entirely to detect the root cause of the problem. Or when it is said that no one can upload files, check your server free disk space, inode, etc.

Cross Check:
To solve a problem try to test the result from different sources. If for example your payments are stored in 3 places (for BI or even the architecture needs in 2 places in different forms) check them all over again from bottom up and vice versa. Or if you have the app in different platforms, check them from web, iOS, android to see whether problem is platform-dependent or not.

#problem_solving #truthify #keep_calm #isolation #cross_check