Sometimes there just isn’t a shortcut to the right answer. You know what I mean: instead of researching the answer yourself, you lean over, talk to your buddy for 30 seconds and he gives you the answer you need. In many cases this works when you’re trying to solve a silly little problem or you just can’t remember the name of the runner up in last years American Idol.
Other problems, unfortunately, require that you understand the background behind the solution before you can actually understand the solution itself. String theory is like this. So are some aspects of quantum mechanics. Most business problems, don’t fall into this level of complexity, although I have seen the odd case where PhDs would be confounded by the sheer complexity of what has been engineered. Not necessarily what was required, just what was engineered.
In some cases there is some simple help, but it does require a bit of reading. I was recently asked for information about when to do branching and exactly how it should be done. In this case, I went to somebody who needs to do this on a frequent basis: Microsoft. Indeed, the information at CodePlex was excellent in terms of it’s understanding of the problem and the potential solutions. For those of you who think you understand how branching should be done, and for those of you who are at a loss, I recommend this document as an excellent source of information from which you can retrieve the bits and pieces that are of particular interest to you. It is not a light read as the amount of information it contains is quite voluminous (approximately 28 pages), but it gives you some interesting insight into an arcane subject.
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