A really really good post by James Bach on how to investigate Intermittent Problems. Any person who does product testing should read this. Even developers/programmers need to read this as this will make it easier to find and fix bugs.
Brief extract from this post:
Some Principles of Intermittent Problems:
- Be comforted: the cause is probably not evil spirits.
- If it happened once, it will probably happen again
- If a bug goes away without being fixed, it probably didn’t go away for good.
- Be wary of any fix made to an intermittent bug. By definition, a fixed bug and an unfixed intermittent bug are indistinguishable over some period of time and/or input space.
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Some General Suggestions for Investigating Intermittent Problems:
- Recheck your most basic assumptions: are you using the computer you think you are using? are you testing what you think you are testing? are you observing what you think you are observing?
- Eyewitness reports leave out a lot of potentially vital information. So listen, but DO NOT BECOME ATTACHED to the claims people make.
- If someone tells you what the problem can’t possibly be, consider putting extra attention into those possibilities.
Original Post:
How to Investigate Intermittent Problems
– Suramya