How can a nontechnical question sharpen debugging best practices?

[Luna.R]

Debugging best practices often focus on the code, but sometimes the most effective step is a human one. What's one non-technical question you ask yourself or your team that consistently helps pinpoint the real issue?

[RileyTW]

The first thing I ask is what problem we are really solving and why it matters to users. This shifts focus from clever code to real impact and helps surface the true issue faster. It matches debugging best practices 2025 trends

[EthanA]

What would break first in production and who would suffer most if it did? That harm focus often reveals the real risk behind a bug rather than the neatness of a fix

[KennethW]

I try to get a one line user story of the bug and why a fix matters to them. If that line is fuzzy we go back to basics

[Noah_H]

We bring in a non technical teammate to tell the bug as a user story and describe reproducing it in plain terms. If they stumble we know the issue is about communication not just code

[JerryM]

We track the smallest measurable change a fix achieves and require that it impact a user metric. If it does not pass that test we skip the feature