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Re: [Launchpad-users] Blueprints in Launchpad?!



On Mon, Aug 3, 2009 at 12:27 PM, Bernd<brot@xxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Hello,
>
> I registered a few blueprints in the past, but for my opinion blueprints
> in launchpad are very useless.
>
> But why do I think so? I gained experience that blueprints doesn't get
> an answer, always stay unchanged and nobody reviews them.
>
> In my opinion it's better to report a bug also for feature requests. Bug
> reports get a lot more attention. Nobody would like to have a lot of
> open bugs. But open blueprints doesn't matter.
>
> As example you should have a look on the "Ubuntu One" Blueprint page:
> https://blueprints.edge.launchpad.net/ubuntuone
>
> What's your opinion on blueprints?
>


Blueprints are great for tracking new features for a couple reasons.
First, they have more granular status types for defining progress
(since they are larger tasks, "In Progress" is not really sufficient
as it is for bugs). They also have the concepts of drivers, assignees,
and approvers, which is helpful if you have multiple people managing
the project.

Another great advantage is that blueprints can have dependencies so I
can mark the "Selectable Currency on Graph" blueprint as dependent on
the "Currency Converter" blueprint, as when you have a bunch of
features that require other features first, it becomes very useful for
figuring out what is blocking future work and what to do next.

I also like using blueprints as a way to get ideas from users, and
then flesh out the concepts with them in the whiteboard and then
assign it an importance and milestone. The large problem with this,
and the problem the "Ubuntu One" project is having IMO is that since
you can't subscribe to blueprints
(https://bugs.launchpad.net/blueprint/+bug/223928) so the Ubuntu One
people probably have no idea any ideas were ever contributed there!
Unless you look at the list of all all blueprints, you'll never have
knowledge about them. If someone could be notified on new blueprints,
they could triage them appropriately and you wouldn't have these
blueprints no one has ever seen floating about in prominent projects.
This has come up as a problem a couple times and every time it does it
reminds me to check my blueprints and again this time, I noticed
another new blueprint a user left previously!

One other issue is that editing and manipulating blueprints can be a
little tedious as Priority, Definition, Milestone, and the People are
all edited separately and not via AJAX, so to change a blueprint you
are generally talking about visiting 4-8 pages. If this were cleaned
up I think people might find blueprints more usable as well.

Overall I definitely find them useful for tracking workflow and
priority of features, and having new features separated from bugs on
the milestone page is very helpful as well.

--
Michael Rooney
mrooney@xxxxxxxxxx



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