From Tech Support to QA

Posted: September 4th, 2008 | Author: telcor | Filed under: Information Technology (IT), Software, Work | Tags: , |

Resolve the issue and move to the next one. This is a common mind set among the Tech Support personnel where I work. This is certainly commendable from the customer’s view point as the customer certainly wants the issue resolved and in a timely fashion. However, what benefits the customer more:

  1. Resolve the immediate problem; or
  2. Resolve the underlying issue (wherein the problem reported by the customer is merely a symptom of a different problem)

A key question for transitioning from point 1 to 2 is “why?” E.g.

  • Why did this problem occur?
  • What data or environment change caused this?
  • Why does the ( data or environment ) cause this issue?

Asking the questions and tracing symptoms to the source is invaluable. Once the source is identified, one can determine reproducibility and define a test, all of which can lead to a fix. Once the issue is fixed, we can Assure the problem will not reoccur in the future, for this customer or others.

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