Infinite Wishes 🏳️‍⚧️🚀

Is a weblog by Emma Humphries

02 Feb 2023 » Notes on bug handling

I have thoughts and opinions on handling bugs in software projects, and they all have been living in notes, and I want to get them more systematized.

  1. The goal of defect handling is providing a view of a software project’s health through the consistent processing and resolution of bugs, identifying critical bugs, and understanding what bugs are associated with features, products, and releases
  2. Hoye’s law: The biggest predictor of if a bug will be resolved successfully is if it is in front of the right persons to work on it
  3. Use consistent definitions:
    • a P3 is a backlog item for every team
    • a S1 is a block ship for every team
  4. Don’t conflate priority with severity
    • Priority is a scheduling problem
    • Severity is a release problem
  5. Triage means “What’s the next right thing?” for a bug
    • Fix it now
    • Put it in a backlog of work to schedule
    • Get a question answered
    • Close it
    • Move it
  6. Make triage simple
    • What are the minimum number of things you have to touch in a bug to know what the next right thing is?
  7. Close invalid bugs quickly
  8. Public Bug trackers are social media
  9. Bug trackers are not project management software
  10. Bug trackers are not code review software
  11. A task is not a defect
  12. An enhancement is not a defect

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