How To Ask For Help

I get asked a lot of technical questions during the day... sometimes because I know the answer, other times because I'm one of the few developers who wont immediately rip the head off of somebody for violating procedures or netiquette. For example, you would not believe how furious some of our developers get at consultants who cross post their questions.

It can get ugly... trust me. Don't cross post.

Anyway, being the nice guy who loves to help certainly has its down side. People ask me a lot of questions... and not all of them are well thought out.

For example, I was recently interrupted at my desk by somebody who had a few questions for me. I prefer email, but it seemed to be an important project, so I obliged. Well, he didn't bring the list of questions. Nor did he have a note pad for the answers. Nor could he even remember the questions.

Grrrrr...

After wasting some time, I suggested that since he had the list at his desk, he should go back there and send an email with the questions. Obviously that would be the optimal use of everybody's time. So, he went back to his desk, and never even sent me the questions.

Lovely...

This isn't an isolated incident... I also get plenty of emails essentially saying "Something's broken. How do I fix it?" No info on what is broken, or where... not exactly making it easy for me to help.

Apparently, I'm not alone. I recently came across a good article at Lifehacker on the article art of asking good questions.

I'm placing a summary here on my blog... so in the future if I encounter somebody in need of a refresher course on how to motivate people to help, I will send them a link here. The basic rules are:

Be Specific

You should give the helper enough background information on your problem. Make it easy for the person to help you. This does not mean forwarding them a hundred item long email thread with the question "what do you think?" It means putting some effort into summarizing the problem, and placing any actionable requests as close to the top as possible.

Do Your Research

You should spend at least ten minutes on Google, searching the manuals, running some tests, or searching your local content management system before asking a technical question.

Be up front about what you already did to find the answer on your own. If you do not feel comfortable explaining what you already did, then you probably did not do enough research.

Explaining what you did is vital, because lots of busy people simply snap back a glib "try Google" answer... especially when they feel that they are doing your job for you.

Ask the Right Person

You should try to avoid asking people questions not relevant to their expertise. Don't ask a developer about HR policies and procedures... how the heck should they know? They wear shorts to work. They obviously don't have a clue about dress code, and other HR policies. So please don't ask.

Make it Worth the Person's Time

This point is more relevant towards asking for help outside of your department, who have no specific responsibility to help you.

Do not tell somebody how desperate you are for their help... such pleas typically fall on deaf ears, because they make you look totally incompetent. And what do incompetent people do? Beg for help, then take all the credit to mask their incompetence.

Again, not a winning strategy.

Instead, you need to make the helper feel an important role in the success of the project. Make sure everybody know how vital the helper is. Give them credit, send genuine praise to their manager. We all love compliments, so this will make them even more eager to help in the future.

If you do not intend to give the helper credit where its due, then you had better be prepared to compensate them very very well. You are essentially asking them to be a ghost writer for your project. Skilled people with that kind of temperament are hard to find.