Julia Irvin

Embedded C and assembly (I have written hundreds of thousands of lines of code)
Foster care (volunteered for almost 30 years)(not engineering related, keeps me grounded)

No specific methodology, just common sense based on experience. When I encounter a problem, I think of what I consider to be the most likely causes, and I chase those down, run some tests, try to cut the problem in half, if none of those initial ideas pan out, I come up with some more. I'll ask other people their opinions, I'll talk to FAEs etc., but for quite a while I find that I am most often the one that figures out the answer first. It's always a good idea to take advantage of the built-in diagnostics of whatever technology you are using/debugging...often basic questions can be answered using off the shelf analysis tools (for electrical work this involves oscilloscopes, multimeters and spectrum analyzers, for software/firmware this involves debuggers and protocol analyzers, for operating system issues, checking task stacks/watermarks are often helpful....when the off-the-shelf tools aren't helping you narrow in, sometimes you have to create your own diagnostic tools...the more difficult problems are the ones that happen asynchronously, at seemingly random time intervals...it can be difficult to discern the exact confluence of events that causes a particular problem...sometimes there is educated guessing involved...course statistics...once you *believe* you may have solved a particular problem, you often don't know for sure until it has been a very long time since you have seen the problem, you become more sure that you have nailed the problem as time goes by...sometimes there is something akin to multi-organ failure, more than one problem, but it's not obvious that there are multiple problems, you don't know until you have fixed one thing, seemingly made the problem better, but you still see at least one more problem...You get the idea. I love the complicated problem(s), although these can be very stressful situations, you *need* to get it cleaned up, to find the solution(s), everyone is breathing down your neck, but the problems are deep, and there are few if any experts to rely on...tremendous challenge...to have solved a problem set such as I am describing is extremely satisfying...but you are buried whilst you are in the midst of it.