Often, I get mails
asking testers and budding testers asking questions and seeking my answers.
Some of them are questions to something I wrote on my blog. Most of the questions
are in the form "what is xxx" or "how to do yyy".
Here is my advice/suggestion
on how one should approach getting answers to the questions that they have on a
given topic (this applies to any quest to know something).
Before I answer a
question - I will ask you - what do you think? how will you find out? what
information or facilitation you need to find answer to this question.
This is how James Bach challenged me when I used to
ask him questions in the beginning. As James kept on pushing me back - I
realized I must do some homework before ask. In the process, I learnt to find
out myself some hints or pointers to question that I have and then seek help by
asking "Here is a question" and "Here are my initial thoughts or
pointers to this question". "Here is what I find contradicting or
not-fitting in". "Here are the sources of information that I
used".
Most of the times -
through this process of figuring out, you will get answers in 2-3 iterations
without any external help. In this process of finding out - when you are stuck,
ask yourself, what information do I need? how will get that information?
Give it a try - you
will learn to find answers to your questions yourself - that would be a
fascinating journey.
1 comment:
Hi Shrini, I agree with your post entirely. I think one of the best ways to learn, and perhaps learn a little bit about one's own self, is to ask yourself the same question and see what you can find. In today's age of the internet, it can be very easy to find answers. This said, I do also feel that asking questions is a very powerful technique to learn new things, potentially very quickly. What do you think?
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