Unlock Your IT Career Potential

Mastering the Art of Asking Questions

The biggest thing to start out as a developer, or IT professional in general, is to ask questions. However, to advance further in your career you must learn how to ask the correct questions. That is not to say that a question is necessarily wrong. For instance, If it is your first time dealing with a software application and you are not sure how something works, then by all means ask the question; however, if your question leads you to investigate an incorrect path or if you're repeating the same question multiple times a month, then that is a problem.

Hi, I am Stone Sommers and I've been In the IT profession for 8 years starting off as an IT call center agent and eventually becoming a web developer.

This article is not going to get into full details on what the best questions are to ask, but rather introducing thought processes and techniques that could help you better develop the skill of asking questions.

Who could benefit?

Who could benefit from this article? Honestly anyone could benefit from listening to the points that I'm going to make. But I will be using my experiences to illustrate points that focus on IT professionals including:

• IT call center agents
• Network operations center technicians
• Developers
• Quality assurance engineers

Okay, let's get into it.

Tell a Story

The biggest thing that ever helped me to start developing the skill was my IT call center manager instructing me to document tickets as if you're telling a story. Now documenting issues that people encounter and the steps you took to resolve the issue might not directly seem like it would help you become better at asking questions; however, if you think of a problem you are facing as if it is a story happening then you just need to follow where it goes.

For instance, let's say you are unable to connect to Google the story could go as such…

Sarah is unable to connect to the Intranet website

I know it is not interesting at all and on top of that not informative, which leads me to my next point: revise the story to be more descriptive.

Revise to be Descriptive

Now ask yourself, what would make that story more interesting and informative? So let us ask ourselves what is the story missing. The story already has who and what the problem is, but we could ask where and how?

Where is Sarah trying to access the website? Is she trying to access it in the office or at home? Is she trying to access it from a laptop or phone? How is she trying to open the website? Is she using Google Chrome, Firefox, Safari? What link is she using?

After we ask those questions, we can revise the story…

Sarah is unable to connect to the Intranet website using her laptop while she is at home. She used Google Chrome and the Sharepoint URL.

With that information, we know our IT manager told us this morning that the platform team finished migrating over from Sharepoint to Confluence, so now that we understand the issue we could finish off the story.

Sarah was unable to connect to the Intranet website using her laptop while she was at home. She used Google Chrome and the Sharepoint URL. I informed her of the new Confluence URL and she was able to access it with no problem.

Do your own research first?

Now that we got the thought process of asking questions out of the way, let's focus on figuring out what questions to ask in your story, particularly questions on topics that you are unfamiliar with. The obvious answer is to use Google or another search engine; however, I am going to skip over the importance of the internet as you likely understand. Rather let's shift the focus on figuring out unfamiliar applications that are proprietary to the business you are working for. Google won't be able to assist you in that case.

Never Ask Co-workers First

First off, asking your co-workers should never be the first step you take when you have a question. Think about it. You're working on a ticket that you have been assigned and your co-worker starts asking several questions to help them finish the work they have been assigned, taking you away from finishing your tasks. On top of that, your company uses the scrum approach which measures how much work you output for the company resulting in reduction in points you earn in a sprint. Even if you have a conversation with your manager as to why you were unable to complete the tickets, people outside the development department, or at the very least less associated with your team, evaluate these points to determine promotions. You wouldn't want your co-workers taking time away from your tasks to help them with questions that they could ideally figure out on their own.

When should you ask your co-workers?

If you have spend an excessive amount of time on the task relative to how difficult the task was estimated or you have exhausted all resources and you are still unable to figure out the answer, then you should ask your co-workers. However, when you ask your co-workers, you should be able to explain what you have done to try to figure out the answer. This way, your co-workers can see that you have put in the effort to try to figure out the answer on your own.

High-proprity exception

There are exceptions to the rule. If you are working on a high-priority time sensitive ticket, you could ask your co-workers questions immedately. In terms of escalations, you could even be on call explaining your stream of consciousness in questions to yourself and other might correct you in the process.

Where to start?

Where you start could always very from task to task; however, it is generally a good idea to start at a high-level and then break it down into granular parts. For instance, if you are adding a feature to a website that allows users to upload a profile picture, you could start by asking yourself what the feature is and then break it down into smaller parts.

• What is the high-level description of feature? The feature is to allow users to upload a profile picture.
• Where is the feature going to be located? The feature is going to be located on the user's profile page.
• How is the feature going to look? The feature is going to be a button that says "Upload Profile Picture".
• What file needs to be updated to add the feature? ...
• What is the first step to add the feature? ...
• Etc.

Experience exception

Of course, if you have experience with the task you are working on, you could skip the high-level questions and go straight to the granular questions. For instance, if you need to investigate why an error is occuring in production and Splunk is showing you an error message you encountered before, you could skip the high-level questions and go straight to fixing the issue.

Conclusion

In conclusion, asking questions is a skill that you will need to develop as you advance in your IT career. The biggest thing to remember is to tell a story that are informative and interesting. You should do your own research before asking your co-workers questions. If you have exhausted all resources and you are still unable to figure out the answer, then you should ask your co-workers with a detailed explanation of what you have done to try to figure out the answer. Where you start could always very from task to task; however, it is generally a good idea to start at a high-level and then break it down into granular parts.