From Tech Support to QA
Posted: September 4th, 2008 | Author: telcor | Filed under: Information Technology (IT), Software, Work | Tags: QA, Technical | No Comments »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:
- Resolve the immediate problem; or
- 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.