launchpad-dev team mailing list archive

[Robert Collins <robertc@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Thu, Mar 31, 2011 at 7:16 PM, Huw Wilkins <huw.wilkins@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> There are a couple of things you can do to help. One is to tag bugs like
> these. If you're not entirely sure if a bug fits this category then tag
> it anyway and the person who picks it up will quickly discover if it
> really is straightforward or not.
>
> The other thing you can do is help me fix these bugs. One thing to
> remember is that sometimes with UI bugs the solution is not always what
> has been proposed by the bug reporter.
>
> Just as we have goals like page requests to be sub one second and zero
> OOPSes, one of my goals for the UI is zero WTF moments (unfortunately
> there are no easy metrics for knowing when we've achieved this). There
> are a lot of these in Launchpad at the moment, and fixing these bugs
> will be a big step in the right direction.

I agree with you that the bugs you've been tagging will make a
significant difference to Launchpad - I think we should change their
importance to High [and having the tag there as an explanation for why
it is a high priority bug is good to].

One of the big changes we've made with the squad structure is to
simplify identifying 'whats next' for engineers.

For feature squad engineers, its 'whatever is needed for the feature'.
For maintenance engineers its 'critical bugs, then high bugs with a
bias towards older bugs first and don't forget the CHR
responsibilities'.

Asking folk to look at a tag to decide what to pickup and work on adds
cognitive overhead that we don't need (complex tasks are harder to do,
we should make the tasks we give ourselves as simple as possible).

I don't think we're ready to escalate these bugs to critical - after
all they don't stop people completing their work (though they will
make it much more pleasant to do so). However saying that these bugs
are important to Launchpad, worth doing before other functional
changes (at least some of the time) implies High per the
https://dev.launchpad.net/BugTriage rationale.

So, I think that you should escalate them to High. That will get them
in the queue and ensure they don't get ignored because folk are too
busy to remember to check the specific tag.

Once we've cleared the criticals and we do a pass over High
downgrading things that are not important enough to ensure we do in
the next 6 months, we can keep bugs tagged with ui-easy as High.

Cheers,
Rob