My experience, in a development shop where the product has hundreds of open defect reports, each defect is assigned both a Severity and a Priority. The Severity is the impact on the customer(s). The Priority is based partly on that, and partly on other factors, which might include the difficulty to implement, the relationship with planned future changes, the age of the defect, etc. Not everything can be fixed, so a ranking has to be assigned. A highest Severity bug might involve a crash, but it rarely happens so the priority is not so high. A lowest severity bug might be cosmetic only, but it is driving everyone crazy or the programmer happens to know exactly how to fix it quickly, so the priority is not so low.
Ward From: Alex MacPhee Sent: Saturday, February 15, 2014 9:10 AM To: [email protected] Subject: RE: [LegacyUG] Endnotes I'm sure we can agree to disagree. But at the risk of causing an outbreak of chuckling with you, I am a former IT professional, with a lot of experience, and I led several of the teams developing the largest non-defence computer project in Europe in the field of telecommunications. The programmers may "work for the developer", but the developer has nothing to develop without customers who pay, unless that is it is a mere hobby. The real priorities here are business priorities. There is absolutely no point in assigning a high priority to fixing a trivial fault when there's a major problem that risks driving the customer to another product. It may be a cliche, but don't re-arrange the deckchairs on the Titanic. Without customers, the developer has nothing but time on his hands. When the customers move to another product because the competition is addressing the customer's priorities and not the programmer's, the programmer will have plenty of time to assign a high priority to twiddling his thumbs because the revenue stream is drying up. Alex -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: [email protected] Date: Sat, 15 Feb 2014 08:33:36 -0500 Subject: Re: [LegacyUG] Endnotes To: [email protected] Sorry, We will have to agree to disagree. The programmers work for the developer. The customer purchases a license to use the program. If the customer has an issues, they can contact the developer/software owner. The customer absolutely does not contact the programmer nor does the customer have the right or knowledge to dictate to the programmer what priorities should be set. I always chuckle when someone contacts this list and says I am a former programmer or I am an IT professional therefore I know what the best business model is for a company I have never worked for. There are many many users on this list that barely know how to turn a computer on (no insults intended to anyone). How can those same people possibly know what priorities should be set for correcting perceived issues which in many cases is not an issue, but user misunderstanding. As I said, we will have to agree to disagree - setting priorities belongs with the programmers - not the users. On Sat, Feb 15, 2014 at 8:04 AM, Alex MacPhee <[email protected]> wrote: In the real and commercial world, not the land of La La, it's the customers who pay the programmers, not the programmers who pay the customers. The function of a program suite is to solve a problem that the customer has, not a problem the programmer has, and it's the customer's priorities therefore that count. There is a maxim well understood in the commercial world, that if you don't listen to your customers, somebody else will. Alex Ron Bernier Woonsocket, RI Legacy User Group guidelines: http://www.LegacyFamilyTree.com/Etiquette.asp Archived messages after Nov. 21 2009: http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/ Archived messages from old mail server - before Nov. 21 2009: http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/ Online technical support: http://www.LegacyFamilyTree.com/Help.asp Follow Legacy on Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/LegacyFamilyTree) and on our blog (http://news.LegacyFamilyTree.com). To unsubscribe: http://www.LegacyFamilyTree.com/LegacyLists.asp
