Eric Sink on Shipping Bugs
May 27th, 2006
This post, by Eric Sink, is a good summary of ideas I didn’t encounter until I started working with the Select Access team way back when the bubble was young. (The last bubble, that is, not the impending Web 2.0 blowout.)
“I like to visualise the first two plotted on a 2D graph” is the single scariest section of the post. While yes, graphs can be useful for quick analysis of project status, when in the hands of the wrong people they can be disasterous for a project. “Graph X needs to be shaped as Y before Z can ship” leads to project management by graph manipulation. Bugs will then have their priorities adjusted to assist the shaping of the graph. Shipping with known bugs is perfectly acceptable, but shipping with a list of known bugs where there are some that should have been fixed but were not because they were pushed off the radar is not.
-adam
disclaimer: cynical tester