Troubleshooting
The first question many interviewers ask potential IT job candidates explores how they can solve an unstructured problem. What they’re trying to discover is whether the engineer can solve problems with software. This type of problem solving is software troubleshooting.
Software troubleshooting is the process of resolving technical or source-code-related problems in software. There are typically two levels to this type of problem solving. One is functional and the other is non-functional.
The following is a template for software troubleshooting:
- Identify the problem
- Check on possible issues that can cause such problems
- Work on measures to find a solution
Issues are resolved by software developers, quality and assurance engineers, or support engineers. Each of these roles review and optimize software by removing bugs and errors from the source code.
Third party software vendors also help in software troubleshooting. The third party software vendor can be a software manufacturer or an open source coding project.
Typically, third party vendors fix the problem by releasing periodic updates or patches for their software. However, more frequently the vendors must explain a missed configuration step because most software depends on configuration files or data that’s inside a database.
