Context is everything

Ever heard your other half in the house ask “Why is this still here, its not the place for this?” and you stand there, in a random room not having a clue what its about. You then have to do a couple of things:

1. Find out who asked the question.
2. Find out what it was in connection with.
3. Discuss the reason for said item to be in the place it was found.
4. Discuss at length the solution of why its there, why it should not be there and where would be a better place to put it.

Can you imagine you heard the following. “Dear would you come here? Why are your keys on the table, can you please put it on the key rack in the kitchen where it belongs.“. All of a sudden you have direction, action and solution in 1 go. You have context and you understand the problem because you were shown the problem and now you know how to solve it.

This exact same situation applies to software development. Context is everything and can save a lot of time. More often than not when I get a bug ticket its related to a small part of the app. Lets use this admin panel as an example. Lets say that the drop down is not expanding the sub menu for color settings.

This is the the image attached to the description of the bug. Firstly, I can not remember exactly in the system where this button appears, so I start to look for it. I also search the code base for “Color Settings” and find multiple references. Then I start looking at the app in places where I think it can be. If I am unable to figure out where this is located I will then contact the user who logged the bug to show me how I can reproduce the error.

This entire process can take 5 min or 5 hours, but what if I was sent this screenshot?

All of a sudden, without even looking at the description, I can see exactly where I need to be focusing to fix the bug. I dont have to contact anyone, I also dont need to go do weird code searches to locate where the item is. I can see immediately its on the post edit / add new sections of the app and I can target the code with in seconds. From there I can read what the bug / feature is and I can very simply fix and communicate on the task without having to waste valuable time.

What makes is interesting is the amount of effort to take this screenshot and indicate the issue equates to the same amount of time as the first example.

So as a favor can I ask all Clients, Quality Assurance Engineers, Testers, Product Owners and support staff, a full screen screenshot to show full context will save a lot of time and effort.