ubuntu-defect-analysts team mailing list archive

[Brian Murray <brian@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Wed, Oct 05, 2011 at 02:04:15PM -0500, Kate Stewart wrote:
> 
Date: Fri, 30 Sep 2011 09:06:56 +0100
From: Rick Spencer <rick.spencer@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> On 09/28/2011 12:16 AM, Kate Stewart wrote:
> >There has been some confusion occurring about the role and
> >responsibilities of defect analysts on specific teams, and how a team
> >with defect analysts should be interacting with teams without defect
> >analysts.
> >
> >For teams without defect analysts, the follow role should be performed
> >by the team lead or manager (or their visible delegate ;) ).
> >
> >The following is a first pass at clarifying the Role and
> >Responsibilities that has been worked up with the existing Defect
> >Analysts.  Feedback is welcome.
> >
> >Role:
> >Analyze defects reported about a team’s packages that are most important
> >for the quality of the release and customer perception, and ensure that
> >the defects are addressed by the engineering team.  This requires
> >creating and maintaining metrics for determining the quality of products
> >and effectiveness of processes.
> I think the role definition can be stronger. For example, it could
> start with "The defect analyst is the primary driver for quality on
> their team. A successful defect analyst will do whatever is
> necessary to help their team release with maximum quality."
> 
> >Responsibilities:
> >- Drive and own strategies for assessing the state of their product and
> >measuring improvements or failures.
> >- Analyze bugs found and filter out key ones to be worked on by
> >developers to satisfy milestone targets [1].
> >- Clarify and track the handoff process for bugs that transition between
> >teams.
> >- Create tools and processes to improve efficiency and utility of the
> >defect analysis and reporting process,  including development of
> >appropriate metrics and data visualization.
> >- Analyze and monitor the bug reporting process of their product to
> >ensure necessary information is being gathered and that unnecessary bugs
> >are not being reported.
> >- Fixing bugs that are important to the analysis and monitoring
> >processes.
>  - Work with the QA team to ensure that necessary automated tests
> are in place, being run, and producing useful results.

This makes sense to me to some degree but I think individual developers
on the engineering teams should also be doing this.  For example, I
believe that Evan is currently working with the QA team to run automated
testing of ubiquity and I think he is the one best qualified to do this.
Additionally, the "being run" part could be interpreted to mean that
running the tests is the defect analyst's responsibility which isn't the
case.

>  - Regularly provide the team and the team's Manager with an
> accurate understanding of the state of their projects at the
> appropriate level of detail.

I take "the team" here to mean my engineering team.  Is that correct?
Also in our call we discussed how this may vary on a team to team basis
as the technical lead for the team may be the point of contact.

>  - Assist the Engineering Managers in channeling resources towards
> areas and issues that require attention.

In addition to channeling resources I believe the engineering managers
would benefit from information like the quantity of In Progress bugs
assigned to developers, etc to identify sticking points in the bug
fixing process.

--
Brian Murray

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