Popular Questions by Functional Role: Developers

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This is the first post in a new ongoing series. Next up will be product managers. If you’d like to share helpful questions or question types from your organization for this series, please email us at info@quandora.com

Developers are the ones engaging with Quandora more than any other functional group. It’s fantastic to hear how much use they’re getting out of our collaborative platform.

In part it’s because their job involves coding at their keyboard in a networked environment, obviously, and every vital question and answer applies to that environment, generally applicable just clicks away. It’s also because of the rise of the Agile programming culture and practice, where 1) collaboration and 2) productivity are vital. Thus, their role is incredibly well-suited for collaborative Q&A.

Quandora_question-technical

Collaboration

For developers, collaboration means many things. It can mean assigning ownership for different parts of code for a shared software project. It can also mean having a shared procedure for checking in or changing code. It can mean working together to set up standards around commenting, testing and efficiency. It can even mean sitting next to each other while coding.  At it’s core, collaboration means knowledge sharing.

When we talk to our clients, developers tell us about many popular collaboration question types that revolve around procedures for testing or modifying code, which is so important in their role. Rather than search an intranet for documentation or ask one other person, posting a question about testing/checking out code on Quandora serves an important purpose: it brings these questions to a central place where stakeholders can reach public agreement, even if they’re geographically distributed. This gives confidence to those actively creating code that they’re aware of the best, most up-to-date process, rather than possibly dated documentation or one person’s opinion.

What’s so interesting about developer Q&A on Quandora from what we’re hearing is that questions types are as unlimited as the technologies and coding styles used. Developers tell us that some common questions start with:

  • How do I…” [perform some coding operation. This is a call for advice or help]
  • Where is…” [a resource, shared folder, repository. This is procedural.]
  • Do we have…” [a certain resource. Also procedural. E.g. are we using a tool I’ve used before? Should we be?]

But to even imply that there is a general pattern of questions among developers would be to understate how varied and numerous the questions are by this functional role.

Productivity

Productivity for developers is tantamount. It doesn’t make sense to talk about the types of questions posted to Quandora to boost productivity so much as to mention again that for developers, the use of Quandora as an agreed upon repository of evolving, up-to-date, crowd shared (and thus certified) knowledge is having an impressively positive effect on productivity for developers within their organizations.

Lastly, developers like to discuss software and programming as a whole. Their job necessitates learning on the fly, so they don’t mind asking about new technologies or practices they want to know more about.

This can be seen on Stack Overflow where developers pose endless questions about best practices, practical and rhetorical questions about the ever-changing coding languages in use, and overall opinions about what works best. These last batch are the most fun, because they can create some lively discussions where users engage, argue and at the end of the day, get to know each other and learn about what’s out there.

We’ve heard that developers can mirror this activity in their organization’s Quandora and it’s just as passionate and even more enlightening, helping teams get to know each other and raise the overall level of expertise.

Developers, thank you for being our most passionate and engaged segment. We hope this post helps keep your Q&A creative juices flowing.

Looking for a great way to ask questions and build knowledge with your co-workers? Quandora enables simple, efficient knowledge sharing with your team, way more fun than a mailing list or a forum. Try Quandora

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