How we prioritize bugs

re: How we prioritize bugs

TAG — Sat, 04 Mar 2006 01:46:57 GMT

I feel it's better to change title from "How we prioritize bugs" to "How we postpone bugs".

This is more fair for users.

Setting priorities is about to order things that will be done, but in MSFT - it's about things that will NOT be done (in this release and probably never).

Priority is right

GreenReaper — Sat, 18 Mar 2006 01:59:43 GMT

It's true that some things will not ever be done, as long as the number of things to do exceeds the resources available to do it. Some things will never get done before release, because the benefit of releasing the code

For example, Windows XP has many widely-known holes in it. Probably some of them would have been fixed if Microsoft delayed release for another year. Would it have been better to do that and leave people with Windows ME? I don't think so.

XP SP2 isn't perfect, either. Is it better than the original in terms of security? Certainly. Should people have had to wait until now to get it to ensure that even more problems were fixed, or maybe to add more new features along the way? Of course not. There was a need for a fix now.

Is Vista going to have problems? Sure. Some of them will probably be known beforehand. Do the benefits of releasing outweigh the problems still to come? That's Microsoft's decision. It's not an easy one, but there's a simple solution - if you don't trust it, you can always wait a year or so and see then. Remember they've already gone for three years longer than they originally intended.

And if you don't like their method of prioritizing you can seek to change its criteria, but you're not ever going to get away from the basic fact that some bugs simply aren't worth the time to fix them . . . and nor are some features worth time implementing. Microsoft has to pick and choose. Personally, I don't envy themm, but hey, that's why they make the big bucks. :-)

re: How we prioritize bugs

Philip Rieck — Sun, 19 Mar 2006 23:49:31 GMT

"Setting priorities is about to order things that will be done, but in MSFT - it's about things that will NOT be done (in this release and probably never). "

That's the way it is at any company that.... well, does anything. I've never worked on any product in any company (I've never worked at MSFT) that management really wanted "perfect" - they want it good and cheap, preferably fast as well.

If you have a software project of any useful size, how can you ever fix every issue? You can't - prioritization is about determining where the cost of the fix (in time and money) is worth the benefit or is justified by the risk.

Heck, this isn't just software - it's your house, car, TV, even your doctor does this.

Now, if your issue is about the actual prioritzation methods, or about priorities of specific issues that you disagree with, then say that... Many will probably agree with you.

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Tim Sneath — Tue, 21 Mar 2006 00:46:26 GMT

One of the great joys of my role at Microsoft is that I get to work with some really cool partners who...