I do wonder if they already had a feeling it was not supposed to work that way hence the info gathering. This is one of my favorite all time IT stories because the client was right, and the engineer was left almost going crazy.
When I was a Junior I asked an honest question to the senior I was working with at the time, great dude, I basically asked him because everyone joked about the "works on my machine" crowd, so I said, so what the heck do I do if it only works on my machine? He said you have to figure out what's different. It sounds obvious or simple, but if you go with that mindset, when someone's stuck in the "it works on my machine idk why" sure enough I ask "what is DIFFERENT from your machine and this one?" and it almost always leads to the right answers. It triggers something in our brains. I usually follow up whats different with "what was the last change?" in the case of a production issue.
I do wonder if they already had a feeling it was not supposed to work that way hence the info gathering. This is one of my favorite all time IT stories because the client was right, and the engineer was left almost going crazy.
When I was a Junior I asked an honest question to the senior I was working with at the time, great dude, I basically asked him because everyone joked about the "works on my machine" crowd, so I said, so what the heck do I do if it only works on my machine? He said you have to figure out what's different. It sounds obvious or simple, but if you go with that mindset, when someone's stuck in the "it works on my machine idk why" sure enough I ask "what is DIFFERENT from your machine and this one?" and it almost always leads to the right answers. It triggers something in our brains. I usually follow up whats different with "what was the last change?" in the case of a production issue.