Asking Questions¶
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Its only a silly question if its never asked. Dont wait to float a question as soon as you have it.
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An example would be good right now - when the challenge or issue is not clear or hard to describe
Asking clear questions allows people to provide relevant opinions and answers quickly.
Virtuous Cycle: Practice asking clear questions grows confidence and speed in asking clear questions
Crafting questions saves time
Investing a little time to craft a clear question, ideally with relevant examples, will save a lot of time discussing the appropriate answer.
A shared repository that replicates an issue as simply as possible aids project maintainers quickly understand and adress issues.
The way to get useful answers is to ask effective questions.
The act of creating an effective question can often produce the answer without even needing to share the question with others (although it is valuable to still ask for a wider scope of answers).
The act of creating a question allows for a clear analysis of what the problem is, what has been tried already.
No need to apologies for asking
People enjoy answering questions as it provides a sense of satisfaction that they could help.
Never apologies for asking a question, even if you think the answer should be obvious.
There may be an inappropriate time to ask a person a question directly. Ensure a person is open to questions or use asynchronous communication.
There are no silly questions
People are not born omniscient, they spend their lifetime learning on a unique path.
No two people will understand all the same things in the same way, even when working in the same area.
Ask an Engineering question¶
The more detailed an engineering question is, the more likely that an appropriate answer will be given.
- Convey the goal of your question (what are you trying to achieve)
- Establish the facts as clearly as possible
- What steps did you try
- How does someone else reproduce this issue (create the simplest possible example)
- Convey assumptions made
- Examples, examples, examples
- Review and refactor (remove unnecessary words and information, reread and rewrite to ensure the question is easy to understand)
Fast questions take more time
Asking questions with little or no thought leads to much more time spent explaining the question once its out there.
Example questions¶
Some example engineering questions (TODO: review questions in slack / stack exchange for useful, not so useful examples)
The Art of Asking Questions¶
- Demonstrate preparedness for the conversation
- Illustrate your expertise without showing off
- Invite others to deepen or broaden their thinking and challenge held beliefs
Article from the Harvard Business School
The Question cycle¶
Write > Read > Refactor
Write - Describing the question well often leads to solving the challenge yourself
Read: - Do you understand the question when you read it back to yourself
Refactor: - Can the question be made even clearer
Context¶
- include background, e.g. what is the situation driving the need for the question
- a clear example can be worth many additional words
Challenges:¶
I don't have time, I just need a quick answer
- are you moving too fast?
- for successive occurrences, are you masking a bigger challenge or gap in knowledge
- effective engineering is a marathon (or a hike) rather than a sprint
I should know the answer to x:
- why should you know? Are you sure other people do not have this or similar gaps in their knowledge
- knowledge is leared and retained over time and also fades over time when not used
- Griffin has many unique concepts and designs, with a significantly large and evolving code base
Tool support¶
Practice: - asking questions well quickly builds up the skill of asking questions well
Claude: - help writing clearer questions - can provide good feedback on more common challenges and help clarify questions