Alright, let’s talk about this “Peter Edwards” thing I tried out a while back. It wasn’t some big company initiative, more like something I stumbled upon while trying to fix a recurring headache in one of our old projects.
Where It Started
We had this nasty bug, you know the type. Pops up randomly, hard to reproduce, drives everyone crazy. We’d fix it, or think we did, and then bam, a few weeks later, it’s back. The usual bug reports were getting us nowhere. Just endless back-and-forth, different devs trying different things. Total mess.
Someone, I forget who, maybe it was Dave from the old team, mentioned this “Peter Edwards” approach to documenting issues. Wasn’t a formal methodology, more like a set of principles this guy supposedly used. Sounded kinda intense, honestly.
Giving It a Shot
So, I decided, what the heck, let’s try it. The core idea, as I understood it, was super detailed context gathering for every single occurrence. Not just the usual steps to reproduce, but like, everything.
- What exact OS version was running?
- What other apps were open?
- Time of day?
- What the user had for breakfast? (Okay, maybe not that far, but close.)
- Screenshots, video recordings if possible, logs, system state dumps.
I started doing this myself for the bug. First couple of times, it felt ridiculous. Spent more time documenting the bug than trying to fix it. My notes looked less like a bug report and more like a novel.
The Reality of It
Getting others on board? Forget it. Most folks just wanted to slap on a quick fix and move on. They saw my detailed reports and basically rolled their eyes. “Who has time for this?” was the general vibe. And honestly? They had a point. It slowed things down considerably upfront.
We had this one instance where I insisted we follow the “Peter Edwards” detail level. Took one junior dev almost a whole day just to gather the info for one bug report. Management wasn’t exactly thrilled about the time sink either. It felt like we were adding bureaucracy, not solving problems.
Did It Work Though?
Well, here’s the thing. For that one specific nightmare bug? Yeah, it actually did help. After collecting data like a mad scientist for about three occurrences, patterns started showing up that nobody had noticed before. Things related to network latency spikes combined with a specific background process. We finally managed to squash it properly.
But would I use this “Peter Edwards” level of detail for every single bug? Absolutely not. It’s overkill for 90% of issues. It’s like using a sledgehammer to crack a nut. Takes way too much time and effort for routine stuff.
So, my takeaway? It’s another tool, I guess. Maybe useful in those really rare, super tricky situations. But as a day-to-day practice? Nah. Just creates more work and slows everything down. Stick to the basics unless you’re really, really stuck.
