For all you non-developers out there that work with developers on a regular basis, here are a few quick tips of things NOT to do when the developer is working on fixing a major bug.
- Ask for attendance at a meeting which we’re not really needed at.
- Assign other work to us – we need more weight on our shoulders in these stressful moments!
- Ask for some development work to be done on another project – if we have any available time it’ll be spent fixing the urgent issue, so by definition we don’t have time to work on anything else.
- Ignore our requests for help solving the problem – it’s top priority for us, but your time is better spent asking for updates than helping…
- Send us multiple emails pointing out how serious the bug is – if we’re working on fixing it already…as fast as we can…a reminder of how urgent it is doesn’t really help anything.
Jon Fox was born and raised in central Illinois amongst a flat sea of corn and soy beans. Somehow he managed to give it all up and move to the scenic, mountainous land of Colorado where he is the co-founder, mastermind, and code monkey of IntenseDebate. He graduated from Illinois College in 2006 with a [...]
I like your way of thinking -
Nice post. Yeah, I think the panic factor is the worst part about stuff like this. We know it's serious, let's not inject "the world is going to end" energy into the work environment–it's distracting. It's not like we're sitting there eating bon bons rather than debugging!