Re: [boost] Difference between tickets and bugs

From: Ben Artin (macdev_at_[hidden])
Date: 2007-09-06 01:40:33

In article <p06210218c30467347348@[192.168.16.228]>,
 Marshall Clow <marshall_at_[hidden]> wrote:

> With that in mind, I will be sending out a smaller list every day, of just 
> the "bugs". Less frequently, I will be sending either a full list of all open 
> tickets, or separate messages for each kind of ticket.
> 
> If you think this is a great/good/poor/awful idea, please let me know.

I think that the important question here is  "What are people trying to find 
when they are looking at the ticket list" and the likely answer is "Things to 
work on" for people who are not managing a release and "An idea of a release's 
progress" for people who are managing a release.

I therefore think that when someone asks you to take something out of that list 
(in this case, non-bugs), then they are doing that because they think that 
including that something decreases the signal/noise ratio.

I also think it would be appropriate to disregard the suggestion to exclude 
non-bugs if you can find another way to improve usability of those emails. A few 
things I would consider:

 - The list of ticket count by owner is not useful enough to be at the top
 - Tickets for each owner should be arranged by priority, not by ticket number
 - It should be easier to scan for where one owner ends and the next begins
 - Release managers would be happier with a list that's organized by priority, 
then by owner.

So, combining those, I would do this:

***                        ***
***  High priority tickets ***
***                        ***

== None ==

 Some high priority ticket
 Another high priority ticket

== agurtovoy == 

 Some high priority ticket
 Another high priority ticket

== etc etc ==

***                          ***
***  Medium priority tickets ***
***                          ***

== None ==

 Some medium priority ticket
 Another medium priority ticket

== agurtovoy == 

 Some medium priority ticket
 Another medium priority ticket

== etc etc ==

If you are willing to ignore the needs of release managers and make things 
easier for developers, make the priority grouping secondary.

Of course, this all assumes that tickets are assigned useful priorities. If not, 
then I guess what people are telling you that non-bugs are inherently lower 
priority.

However, as long as you are sending out a big long email, you are hamstrung by 
including information about everyone's tickets, thus guaranteeing that everyone 
who reads it is ignoring most of it. An individualized message to each user 
would be more useful, and a summary to the whole list might still be a good idea.

Finally, the email could gain a lot of in terms of readability if you used some 
basic styling, but I realize that this is Usenet/mailing list, so there's an 
inherent ASCII fetish.

Ben

-- 
I changed my name: <http://periodic-kingdom.org/People/NameChange.php>