\nIt’s often the case that when a question from a customer\ngets filtered through a customer liaison,\nsome context gets lost.\n(I’m giving the customer the benefit of the doubt here\nand assuming that it’s the customer liaison that removed\nthe context rather than the customer who never provided it.)\nConsider the following request:\n<\/p>\n
\nWe would like to know more information about\nthe method the shell uses to resolve shortcuts.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
\nThis is kind of a vague question.\nIt’s like asking\n“I’d like to know more about the anti-lock braking system\nin my car.”\nThere are any number of pieces of information that could be\nprovided about the anti-lock braking system.\n<\/p>\n
\n
- “It requires a Class C data bus.”\n
- “The tire position sensors are on the wheel-axis.”\n
- “It is connected to the brakes.”\n
- “It is shiny.”\n<\/ul>\n
\nWhen we ask the customer,\n“Could you be more specific what type of information you are looking for?”\nthe response is sometimes\n<\/p>\n
\nWe want to know everything.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
\nThis is not a helpful clarification.\nDo they want to start with Maxwell’s Equations and build up from there?\n<\/p>\n
\nAs it happened, in the case of wanting more information\nabout\n\nthe method the shell uses to resolve shortcuts<\/a>,\nthey just wanted to know how to disable the search-based algorithm.\n<\/p>\n
\nThis sort of “ask for everything and figure it out later”\nphenomenon is quite common.\nI remember another customer who wanted to know “everything” about\nchanging network passwords,\nand they wouldn’t be any more specific than that,\nso we said,\n“Well,\nyou can start with\n\nthese documents<\/a>,\nperhaps paying particular attention to\n\nthis one<\/a>,\nbut if they tell us what they are going to be doing with the information,\nwe can help steer them to the specific parts that will be most useful\nto them.”\n<\/p>\n
\nAs it turned out, all the customer really wanted to know was\n“When users change their password, is the new password encrypted\non the wire?”\n<\/p>\n
\nThird example, and then I’ll stop.\nAnother customer wanted to know everything about how Explorer\ntakes information from the file system and displays it in an Explorer\nwindow.\nAfter asking a series of questions, we eventually figured out that\nthey in fact didn’t want or need a walkthrough of the entire code path\nthat puts results in the Explorer window.\nThe customer simply wanted to know\n\nwhy two specific folders show up in\ntheir Explorer window with names that didn’t match the file system name<\/a>.\n<\/p>\n
\nWhen you ask for more information,\nexplain what you need the information for,\nor at least be more specific what kind of “more information” you need.\nThat way, you save everybody lots of time.\nThe people answering your question don’t waste their time\ngathering information you don’t need\n(and gathering that information can be quite time-consuming),\nand you don’t waste your time sifting through all the information\nyou don’t want.\n<\/p>\n