Breaking down a mountain of bugs
A peek into the inner life of releasing a product ...
There comes that time in a project as a Program Manager when one is staring at a large number of bugs in the bug database. (I use "bug" here very generically to describe any issue being tracked, not only defects in source code.) As the number grows beyond 10 it becomes increasingly difficult to form and communicate a coherent picture of what is going on.
My advice to other PMs has always remained the same: Analyze what you've got: bucketize, prioritize, excercise judgement, follow-through and repeat as needed. Once a PM and his dev and test counterparts have done that analysis, then any member of the feature team can relate a clear story to management about "what is going on" in their area.
During the ship cycle for Forefront Client Security there were we faced such situations where each feature team had a large number of issues address. In my role as someone driving the project I created a simple diagram to assist the Program Management team in performing this analysis. My goal in the diagram was to provide a framework upon which the Program Management team could address their areas without being too perscriptive.
I've attached a zip file with cleaned-up version of that diagram:
The zip file contains these formats:
- PDF format
- XPS format
- VSD format (Visio)
