[PLUG] Bug-tracking software.

alan alan at clueserver.org
Tue May 15 17:13:57 UTC 2007


On Tue, 15 May 2007, Aaron Burt wrote:

> On Mon, May 14, 2007 at 10:12:43PM -0700, Ronald Chmara wrote:
>> Something I've found helpful is to not introduce new *software* to a
>> team, but instead introduce new *process*.
>
> +1.  It's all about tha process.

Sometimes the process gets overdone.

Where I work they started to use Bugzilla.  They are using it not only to 
report bugs, but as a project tracking and request system.

They have so ritualized the process as to make it difficult to get 
anything done.  You have to caluculate due dates, even if you have not 
researched the problem.  They have meeting upon meeting analysing the open 
bugs.  (They figure that if you have more meetings it will get done 
faster.)  It has gotten to the point where you just don't want to enter a 
bug because of all the emotional baggage that has been attached to the 
process.

>> The biggest *process* problem I run into is when the CXO can enter
>> bugs like "website broken" or "something isn't working right", but
>> that's more of a process issue.
>
> That's what a trouble-ticket (job-tracking, whatever) system is for.
> It's been very carefully explained to me that RT is NOT a bug-tracker.

The hard part of any bug tracking or trouble ticket system is getting 
people to make clear descriptions of the problem.

"Its broken" is not a description.  "That thingy over on the internet does 
not work" is also not useful.  Getting users to write detailed and 
informative descriptions of the problem is a challenge.  Even harder is 
making an impression on them that it is their responsibility to be clear. 
They seem to think that it is somehow the IS department's job to somehow 
determine the true problem from a cryptic and next to unreadable message.

And it is not just trouble tickets.  I have a co-worker who writes process 
specs where it is next to imposible to figure out what tables or fields 
she is talking about due to the terse and cryptic method of writing. 
(Half the time she uses the name of the field from the legacy system and 
sometimes it is the current system and sometime it is an aproximation of a 
field name.  And it is usually using COBOL syntax to add to the fun.)

And don't get me started on "Spreadsheet Worship"...

-- 
"ANSI C says access to the padding fields of a struct is undefined.
ANSI C also says that struct assignment is a memcpy. Therefore struct
assignment in ANSI C is a violation of ANSI C..."
                                   - Alan Cox



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