Know Your Context

Another home appliance repair story that has parallels to software development.

A few days ago, I opened the dishwasher to remove the clean dishes.  However, I noticed the dishes weren't very clean.  They still had some food particles left on them.  We'd never had this problem with the dishwasher.  Then my wife pointed something out: "Oh look.  The soap dispenser didn't open".

That explained the dirty dishes.  Now I had to figure out why it didn't open.  There's a release button on the soap dispenser so I pushed that in and the dispenser popped open.  I slid the door shut and opened it again.  I did this a few times to make sure nothing was sticking.  Everything looked okay so I ran the dishwasher again.

Later that evening, I checked and the dishwasher and the dispenser had still not opened.  So now I had a new item on my to-do list.  I hopped on the computer and went to Repair Clinic.com.  It's a great site that helps you diagnose problems with your appliances.  In fact, they had a section specific to my problem.  I was leaning towards a possible problem with the linkage mechanism, but it was late and I didn't want to start taking the dishwasher apart.  I'll tackle it some night later in the week.

At dinner the next day my wife made a small comment: "I fixed the dishwasher today".  "Really?", I asked.  Not that I'm saying she isn't technically capable of taking apart the dishwasher, but appliance repair has just been something she's perfectly comfortable leaving to me.  "How did you fix it?", I asked.  She smiled and said "It was on the wrong cycle.  It was set for rinse and hold."

Now I look back and think of all the time I spent researching a problem in which I had not taken the time to know the entire context in which the problem was occurring.  A simple check to make sure the dishwasher was set for the proper cycle would have identified the issue right away.

If you're in a QA field, make sure your bug reports accurately describe the context in which a problem is occurring.  If you're in development, make sure you know the context under which a bug has been reported to make sure you're approaching the problem from the proper angle!