How to answer questions

Quite an important topic. More important since we work remote more often.

What to do when you’re asked a question or see someone asking a question?

Don’t answer directly

You’re used to helping a person 1:1, which works well most of the time. But it’s very inefficient when you’re a small team building a scalable product like we’re doing.

So instead, follow these steps:

• Talk to the person asking the question to find out any details that might make you understand the problem better, and perhaps also makes your answer more useful.
• Is the question (related to) a bug or is it a more general question.
• If it’s related to a bug, let’s move the “discussion” to the bug tracker. That way, others have a way to discover the answer too.
• If it’s more general, check if the question could have been answered by the public project documentation. If so, provide a (deep)link to the answer. If the documentation provides no answer to the question, edit the documentation with this new-found wisdom and push it as a PR/MR. Provide the link from the PR/MR or the updated documentation if code review has been completed.