I’m thinking of adding some sort of severity code to my RT3 install.
We’re tracking programming defects.
Something like “Pick one or more of these effects”:
Anyone done something like this? What severities did you use? How did
it work out for you?
xoa
Andy Lester => andy@petdance.com => www.petdance.com => AIM:petdance
Andy Lester wrote:
I’m thinking of adding some sort of severity code to my RT3 install.
We’re tracking programming defects.Something like “Pick one or more of these effects”:
- User showstopper
- User gets error message as noise, but life goes on
- Throws crap in the error logs
- Corrupts data
- Makes sales reps call
- Is bad code, but still works
Anyone done something like this? What severities did you use? How did
it work out for you?xoa
Sure am. I went with:
Severity 1 - Chimera
Severity 2 - Low
Severity 3 - Average
Severity 4 - High
Severity 5 - Critical
Severity 6 - Emergency
In addition to these severities I have an “estimated time to completion”:
1 hour or less
more than 1 hour to 1 day
more than 1 day to 1 week
more than 1 week to 1 month
more than 1 month
I then use this matrix to assign the built-in RT priority:
Severity
ETC 1 2 3 4 5 6
ETC <= 1 hour 1 2 3 3 3 10
1 hour < ETC <= 1 day 1 2 3 3 3 10
1 day < ETC <= 1 week 1 2 3 4 5 10
1 week < ETC <= 1 month 1 3 4 5 6 10
1 month < ETC 1 4 5 6 7 10
So priority 3, for example, would get a starting priority of 20 and a
final priority of 29.
Finally, I use this matrix as a guide to when/how often I work on
projects of each priority. Of course, projects with a higher RT
priority within my home-brew priority bands gets done first.
Pri Hours per Day
Monday Tuesday Wednsdy Thrsday Friday
1 - - - - -
2 2 - - - -
3 4 4 4 4 2
4 2 - 2 - -
5 - 4 - 2 -
6-9 - - - 2 6*
10 as required
If I’m all out of pri. 6-9 stuff to do on Fridays, I devote 2 hours to
pri. 1 projects.
The goal of all this complication is to push as much work through the
door in the shortest amount of time possible while still devoting time
to highly important and/or long term projects and not completely
ignoring the very low priority ones. One of the key components is
strongly encouraging requesters to mark the severity as average.
Fortunately, we’re a small enough shop that I usually know if someone is
crying wolf and I just adjust the severity down.
It did take some getting used to and I still haven’t completely
disciplined myself to follow the work schedule, but overall it works
quite well. All projects get a fair shake.
At 06:35 PM 3/11/2004, Andy Lester wrote:
Anyone done something like this? What severities did you use? How did
it work out for you?
I’ve often cloned the Bugzilla severity names for support and for issue
tracking. Lots of major companies just use Severity 1 through Severity 3
or 4, with 1 being the more critical severity, for support.
I would tend to pick one word severity classifications. The only multiple
word severity I use is “On-air Emergency” but that is industry specific
(broadcast television).
You want classifications that are simple but convey substantial meaning.
I’m not too happy with the “pick a number” severity. (What’s the difference
between a 2 and a 3?) Sometimes full words can be too pedantic. (What’s the
difference between minor and trivial?)
I have found a severity field to be very useful. In some cases, they are
even necessary. They dictate a response time. It is important for you to
determine how severity and priority will play into your work flow before
you try to implement them. The worst thing you can have happen is for
people to be using both fields for the same information but one person uses
severity and the other uses priority.
It is also important to recognize that priority has special meaning in RT.
I know there are people that have created a “severity” custom field and
used that to explicitly set a priority value. If you do that, I would
recommend calling the CF “priority” just to avoid confusion.
Michael
Michael S. Liebman m-liebman@northwestern.edu
http://msl521.freeshell.org/
“I have vision and the rest of the world wears bifocals.”
-Paul Newman in “Butch Cassidy & the Sundance Kid”