You've been a software develope for 15 years and this concept of severity/priority is news to you? Have you read any IEEE or Capability Maturity Model? There is a book called 'After the Gold Rush', from Microsoft Press. (I know it's microsoft, but it's still a good book). Read it. IT will point you towards many good resources.
another comment I should have included in my other post...
As a developer, my relationship with our testing department has changed over the years...
Originally, I thought the purpose of testing was to prove there were no bugs in the system.
They ALWAYS discover bugs. I began to think that the purpose of testing was to discover ALL the bugs, and it was the engineer's job to fix them.
They NEVER discover ALL the bugs. I now think that the purpose of testing is statistical... How many bugs are they finding, and what severity are they? This speaks to the quality of the system design and the quality of the engineers working on the system. If there are few bugs found and fixed, you can be confident you have a good system going out. If there are a lot of bugs found and fixed, I would worry that there are a lot more left undiscovered.
It is a common practice to ship with known bugs, but we NEVER ship with a pri/sev 1 or 2, unless a political deadline forces it.
Sounds to me like the company whose product you are using found more bugs than they could reasonably fix in the time they allocated to this phase of their development cycle, and now they are being forced, for political reasons, to ship with those bugs. That would be a red flag to me that there will be other, undiscovered, severe bugs in their software.
At my company, we categorize bugs several different ways. This is all from an IEEE standard, but I don't know which one.
The SEVERITY of the bug is entered when it is discovered. It is one of:
1 - Urgent, causes crash
2 - High - no workaround
3 - medium - workaround available
4 - low - inconvenience.
Other information, such as the steps to reproduce, who discovered it, , a unique ID, and date and version discovered are also recorded. Most important is the TYPE of bug, which is one of:
Code Problem
Configuration Problem
Data Problem
Design ISsue
Enhancement
UI Problem
Documentation Issue
Bugs are assigned to a developer to be fixed. If they are easily fixed, then they are immediately fixed. The unique ID is used in the CVS checkin for the changed files. If the bug is NOT easily fixed, then the developer gives a level of effort, so we can determine the 'cost' of fixing the bug.
Bugs are then assigned a PRIORITY in a 'Configuration Control Board' (CCB) meeting with me (the project manager), several developers, documentation writers, and/or our end users/customers/testers. This can be a small, informal meeting, or a large process-driven meeting. I prefere them small. The PRIORITY in one of:
1 - Urgent, resolve immediately
2 - High, resolve ASAP
3 - Medium, resolve pre-release
4 - Low, desired, but not urgent
5 - on hold, fix in future release.
Our customer has deemed that all severity 1 bugs are automatically priority 1, and all severity 2 are pri 2.
Severity 3 and below are given priorities based on the cost to fix, but if we have too many severity 3's in one 'use case', they collectively become a pri 2.
It's not nearly as much process as it seems, and it really streamlines our development.
We use a tool called TestTrack to track all this, but I would prefer to move towards Bugzilla, as my company has recently jumped on the open source bandwagon.
The only convergence I want is a DVD/RW Drive and an ethernet port on my Tivo.
If my Tivo had the ability to play CDs and DVDs, as well as let me take my episodes of Buffy and burn them onto DVD for safe-keeping, I'd never leave my house (uh, except to buy blank DVDs)
I want the ethernet port so I can stream video to the TV built on linux that slashdot featured about a month ago.d
I was in Beijing in 1993. Most of the city did not have the water pressure to get water up to the 5th floor of buildings. you'd think they should work on infrastructure like this first.
Of course, they may need to build a dozen or so of these things, to handle the population being displaced by the Three Gorges Dam.
According to the article, the DEA gives Amtrack a 10% cut of it's seizures...
What?
How does this work again? Does the DEA estimate the 'street value', and give 10% of that to Amtrak? Do they give them 10% of the drugs and join the amtrak employees in the back room for a party after work? (Wasn't there a train wreck outside Baltimore a few years ago because of a train conductor on drugs?)
This is bizarre to me... it creates an economic interest within Amtrak to lure people carrying large amounts of illegal substances onto the train. If I were a passenger, I think the economic interest should go the other way.
So you would rather support proprietary software interests with public tax dollars?
I'm not suggesting that students be forced to watch a 30 second commercial every time they log into a machine. I'm suggesting that the use of the name is the value added for the advertiser, and the use of the software is the value added for the school. Kids are being exposed to this stuff constantly anyway. One way or another, commercial interests support these activities. A blazing coke logo, or a windows logo with the Pentium chime noise on startup, what's the diff?
You know who could get behind this project and have a Windows Killer?
Coca Cola. Nike. Levis. Adidas.
Those large companies are ALWAYS looking for ways to market to the school crowd. Hell, I'd let my kid look at a Coke logo as his desktop background if it meant having the commercial interest behind entrenching linux in the educational system.
Depending on how tied to their service you are and how hackable it is.
Finally! A reason to hack my tivos to have Ethernet! Can you imagine, a tivo or two connected to your home ethernet, then a few of these PC's around your house? YOU COULD WATCH YOUR TIVO FROM ANYWHERE!
Slashdot Mirror
You've been a software develope for 15 years and this concept of severity/priority is news to you? Have you read any IEEE or Capability Maturity Model? There is a book called 'After the Gold Rush', from Microsoft Press. (I know it's microsoft, but it's still a good book). Read it. IT will point you towards many good resources.
another comment I should have included in my other post...
As a developer, my relationship with our testing department has changed over the years...
Originally, I thought the purpose of testing was to prove there were no bugs in the system.
They ALWAYS discover bugs. I began to think that the purpose of testing was to discover ALL the bugs, and it was the engineer's job to fix them.
They NEVER discover ALL the bugs. I now think that the purpose of testing is statistical... How many bugs are they finding, and what severity are they? This speaks to the quality of the system design and the quality of the engineers working on the system. If there are few bugs found and fixed, you can be confident you have a good system going out. If there are a lot of bugs found and fixed, I would worry that there are a lot more left undiscovered.
It is a common practice to ship with known bugs, but we NEVER ship with a pri/sev 1 or 2, unless a political deadline forces it.
Sounds to me like the company whose product you are using found more bugs than they could reasonably fix in the time they allocated to this phase of their development cycle, and now they are being forced, for political reasons, to ship with those bugs. That would be a red flag to me that there will be other, undiscovered, severe bugs in their software.
At my company, we categorize bugs several different ways. This is all from an IEEE standard, but I don't know which one.
The SEVERITY of the bug is entered when it is discovered. It is one of:
1 - Urgent, causes crash
2 - High - no workaround
3 - medium - workaround available
4 - low - inconvenience.
Other information, such as the steps to reproduce, who discovered it, , a unique ID, and date and version discovered are also recorded. Most important is the TYPE of bug, which is one of:
Code Problem
Configuration Problem
Data Problem
Design ISsue
Enhancement
UI Problem
Documentation Issue
Bugs are assigned to a developer to be fixed. If they are easily fixed, then they are immediately fixed. The unique ID is used in the CVS checkin for the changed files. If the bug is NOT easily fixed, then the developer gives a level of effort, so we can determine the 'cost' of fixing the bug.
Bugs are then assigned a PRIORITY in a 'Configuration Control Board' (CCB) meeting with me (the project manager), several developers, documentation writers, and/or our end users/customers/testers. This can be a small, informal meeting, or a large process-driven meeting. I prefere them small. The PRIORITY in one of:
1 - Urgent, resolve immediately
2 - High, resolve ASAP
3 - Medium, resolve pre-release
4 - Low, desired, but not urgent
5 - on hold, fix in future release.
Our customer has deemed that all severity 1 bugs are automatically priority 1, and all severity 2 are pri 2.
Severity 3 and below are given priorities based on the cost to fix, but if we have too many severity 3's in one 'use case', they collectively become a pri 2.
It's not nearly as much process as it seems, and it really streamlines our development.
We use a tool called TestTrack to track all this, but I would prefer to move towards Bugzilla, as my company has recently jumped on the open source bandwagon.
The only convergence I want is a DVD/RW Drive and an ethernet port on my Tivo.
If my Tivo had the ability to play CDs and DVDs, as well as let me take my episodes of Buffy and burn them onto DVD for safe-keeping, I'd never leave my house (uh, except to buy blank DVDs)
I want the ethernet port so I can stream video to the TV built on linux that slashdot featured about a month ago.d
-db
Of course, they may need to build a dozen or so of these things, to handle the population being displaced by the Three Gorges Dam.
According to the article, the DEA gives Amtrack a 10% cut of it's seizures...
What?
How does this work again? Does the DEA estimate the 'street value', and give 10% of that to Amtrak? Do they give them 10% of the drugs and join the amtrak employees in the back room for a party after work? (Wasn't there a train wreck outside Baltimore a few years ago because of a train conductor on drugs?)
This is bizarre to me... it creates an economic interest within Amtrak to lure people carrying large amounts of illegal substances onto the train. If I were a passenger, I think the economic interest should go the other way.
So you would rather support proprietary software interests with public tax dollars?
I'm not suggesting that students be forced to watch a 30 second commercial every time they log into a machine. I'm suggesting that the use of the name is the value added for the advertiser, and the use of the software is the value added for the school. Kids are being exposed to this stuff constantly anyway. One way or another, commercial interests support these activities. A blazing coke logo, or a windows logo with the Pentium chime noise on startup, what's the diff?
You know who could get behind this project and have a Windows Killer?
Coca Cola. Nike. Levis. Adidas.
Those large companies are ALWAYS looking for ways to market to the school crowd. Hell, I'd let my kid look at a Coke logo as his desktop background if it meant having the commercial interest behind entrenching linux in the educational system.
-db
Depending on how tied to their service you are and how hackable it is.
Finally! A reason to hack my tivos to have Ethernet! Can you imagine, a tivo or two connected to your home ethernet, then a few of these PC's around your house? YOU COULD WATCH YOUR TIVO FROM ANYWHERE!
At least, that's what I want to do...