launchpad-dev team mailing list archive

["Francis J. Lacoste" <francis.lacoste@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On 11-12-10 10:42 AM, Aaron Bentley wrote:
> Hi Francis,
> 
> Just read your piece on the Launchpad blog, and I thought I should
> ask: is https://bugs.launchpad.net/launchpad/+bug/902252 fallout?
> 
> I tagged it as fallout, because the lack of sort functionality is
> caused by dynamic bug listings.  But then I read "regressions and
> fallouts... are really the *new* criticals" and now I'm not so sure.
> 
> See, the underlying issue is that the structural subscriptions
> JavaScript is broken on certain pages.  It raises an exception in the
> domready handler, which terminates execution, so dynamic bug listings
> are never initialized.
> 
> Is this fallout, because dynamic bug listings work introduced a bug?
> Or is it tech debt, because the structural subscription JavaScript's
> been broken all along?
> 

Hi Aaron,

There are multiple ways to look at this issue. But before going over all
of them, I'd say that from a very practical basis tagging this bug as
'fallout' is probably the right thing to do, like you did in your
original assessment. Simply, because this is a critical bug, it's
related to the bug columns feature, and it's not really a regression,
(since it's a new feature that is broken).

Now, if we analyze deeper, it's true that the root cause of this
breakage wasn't introduced by bug columns listing. It was another bug in
the structural subscriptions code. Now, is structural subscription
tech-debt already? If that bug had been discovered in June and we were
applying these categorization rules, that bug would have been
categorized as 'fallout' immediately. But it wasn't, the question could
become: after how-long do unfixed fallouts and regressions become
tech-debt?

But I don't think we really need to answer this question. The reason we
are looking at regression and fallout is specifically so that we can get
them under control. We think this is an easier target than trying to fix
all the Criticals, when there are a lot them lurking in the mine still.
And by getting them under control, prevent them from becoming future
tech-debt.

Also, in the analysis, the "tech-debt" category of bugs were really
referring to stuff developed before the switch to squads (and thus
before we had the new Critical criteria).

Hope this clarifies thing a little.

-- 
Francis J. Lacoste
francis.lacoste@xxxxxxxxxxxxx

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