On Fri, Oct 22, 2010 at 7:43 AM, xor <[email protected]> wrote: > On Thursday 21 October 2010 10:47:49 pm Ian Clarke wrote: > > Obviously there is a lot of frustration about the bugtracker. I think > the > > root of this frustration is the following three problems: > > > > 1) A lack of consensus as to what means what (eg. does the mere presence > of > > an open bug imply that it must be fixed?) > > No, this is no problem. It is very clear in fact: > - If something has target version == next version, it must be fixed OR > assigned a different target version > - If something has no target version, it must be reviewed and assigned one. > If > its not possible to assign one, it must be set to category "feature" since > it > is no bug then. >
So if its clear then you and everyone else must understand, for example, the difference between severity and priority. Do you? Does everyone? Obviously not, in which case there is at least one thing that certainly isn't clear about the bugtracker. > > 2) A lack of consensus as to who is responsible for what (who decides > what > > must be fixed?) > > This is also a non issue. The person who is assigned the issue is > responsible > for getting it fixed ASAP. It obviously is an issue, who decides who the bug is assigned to? > The community of the people who monitor the issue > and respond it can influence the decision. If nobody gives a shit about > commenting on the issue, the person who is assigned the issue can just > dictate > the decision. > That is all very well, except if you were right then our bugtracker would be working just fine - but its not, so you are wrong. > > 3) The bugtracker is permitted to get out of sync with reality (caused > by 1 > > and 2) > > This is a symptom, and the cause is the real problem: > Nobody USES the bugtracker. > There is NO technical problem as the ones you have mentioned. > The problem is pure LAZINESS. > Ah, great solution there - insult people, that is how you motivate them. What other pearls of wisdom can you share with us? > We can fight the problem by enforcing people to use it with the following > policy for releasing new versions which I have proposed in the previous > mail: > > ============================================ > 1. ALL issues with the given target version in the bugtracker must be > resolved, closed or assigned a different target version. By whom? You can't just decree things and expect them to happen. > It should generate the expectation that somebody at least LOOKS AT IT. > "generate the expectation" is meaningless, you have to define a process or you can made demands and tell people what the "expectation" is until you are blue in the face, it won't make any difference. > That is what is missing here: > I've reviewed a shitload of issues, the result is that there are ~400 > issues > with target version 0.8 now, and people, especially toad, refuse to at > least > read them and decide about whether target version 0.8 makes sense or not. > Yes, and the bug scrub process which I propose, and you dismiss, would achieve exactly this. > > I think we should probably try to have a weekly "bug-scrub", where we > > quickly go through all outstanding bugs and confirm that any associated > > metadata (time estimates, completion status, target milestone, assignee > > etc) is correct. This process has worked well for me in other > > environments, although they were commercial, not voluntary. As for > > whether this should be over IRC, or perhaps over Skype I'm not sure, my > > past experience it was all verbal and that seemed to work nicely. > > > > This is a VERY bad idea: The meetings will take at least 1-2 hours of FUD > wars > & nonsense discussions where NO code is written at all. People do not write > code during meetings. > You are absolutely right, if the meeting is poorly run. Perhaps you've only ever had experience of poorly run meetings, in which case your cynicism is understandable, but it is actually possible to keep a meeting short, to-the-point, and avoid tangents. As I said, I'm not making this up, I'm suggesting this because I've done it and I have direct experience of it working. Ian. -- Ian Clarke CEO, SenseArray Email: [email protected] Ph: +1 512 422 3588
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