Our team had a high priority trouble ticket come in. It got assigned to a developer that has a number of years experience, but not a lot of domain knowledge for our system. This developer concluded that the software was working correctly.My team lead told me that we needed to make sure we got the resolution to this problem correct. So we took a look at the developer's findings. Turns out the software was not working correctly after all. So I gave the developer some pointers.
The developer came back for help. I provided advice on some initial steps that could be taken to bound the problem. Then I showed how to query some of the audit data to get more insight into the problem. I continued to provided advice on which parts of the system to investigate. Basically this was just like they type of help a junior team member needed.
Having spent a long time maintaining the system, I figure this is my duty to help those developers in need. It does take up a lot of my time. But the end goal of serving our customers is met. Today the developer continues to track down the root cause of the high priority problem. However in helping this developer do the research, I have got a couple more ideas about potential causes for a different tough problem I have been researching. My problem is that I cannot get in touch with the user who is encountering the problem. Nevertheless I march on. Maybe it will turn out that assisting a fellow developer will give me the ideas needed to crack this tough problem. I sure hope so.
