Part 1 (Dividing defect reports into ToFix, ToTest and ToDefer counts) of this post talked about the importance of Defect Management in a software project, and then got into some details about the regular sending out of a report on Total defects, with these defects having been broken down into ToFix, ToTest and ToDefer stats, maintained on a graph over a period of time with daily updates, so that the team and the managers can figure out whether the team is on progress to resolve these bugs.
This post continues on this line, talking about additional items that can be added to this defect chart and metrics to provide more information to the team and determine whether it is on the right track or not. Are all these metrics important ? There is a lot of comments about not over-burdening people with too many statistics, and there are more comments about letting people do their work rather than sending so many statistics that they stop looking at these stats. However, it is also true that the role of the team managers is to look at the broader situation in terms of project status, and the defect management is an important part of this. It is true that the team members should not be burdened with these figures, but for the team managers, it is critical to look at such data.
So, the team looks at the ongoing figures for defects in terms of ToFix over a period of days and tries to determine whether the team is on the right track or not. So what else should you be capturing ? Another metric that can now be added to such a report is about the number of defects that are still incoming. There are primarily 2 ways in which defects can be added to the count of developers:
- New defects that are logged against the development team and which add to their count and to the overall ToFix count
- Defects that have been rejected by the testing team after they have been marked fixed by the developer but there is a problem in the fix (this can vary a lot among different teams and even in a team - a developer could be fixing defects with hardly any returns and there could be another developer who is under pressure and many of whose defects are returned because of some problems). So, whether to determine this kind of statistic and calculate metrics for such a case determines of whether the team is seeing such kind of returns for the defect management.
Once you have these kind of defect counts, it helps in determining the current status of defects and see whether the team is on the right track. So, you have a total count of open ToFix defects, and there is a decline in such a count needed to hit the deadlines. However, for getting to such a deadline, you need the number of incoming defects to be also fitting into this strategy. If there are a large number of incoming defects, then the team will not be easily able to determine whether their ToFix defect count is decreasing by the amount they want to hit their targets, and this then needs a change to the strategy to determine whether the team will get there or not.
This post continues on this line, talking about additional items that can be added to this defect chart and metrics to provide more information to the team and determine whether it is on the right track or not. Are all these metrics important ? There is a lot of comments about not over-burdening people with too many statistics, and there are more comments about letting people do their work rather than sending so many statistics that they stop looking at these stats. However, it is also true that the role of the team managers is to look at the broader situation in terms of project status, and the defect management is an important part of this. It is true that the team members should not be burdened with these figures, but for the team managers, it is critical to look at such data.
So, the team looks at the ongoing figures for defects in terms of ToFix over a period of days and tries to determine whether the team is on the right track or not. So what else should you be capturing ? Another metric that can now be added to such a report is about the number of defects that are still incoming. There are primarily 2 ways in which defects can be added to the count of developers:
- New defects that are logged against the development team and which add to their count and to the overall ToFix count
- Defects that have been rejected by the testing team after they have been marked fixed by the developer but there is a problem in the fix (this can vary a lot among different teams and even in a team - a developer could be fixing defects with hardly any returns and there could be another developer who is under pressure and many of whose defects are returned because of some problems). So, whether to determine this kind of statistic and calculate metrics for such a case determines of whether the team is seeing such kind of returns for the defect management.
Once you have these kind of defect counts, it helps in determining the current status of defects and see whether the team is on the right track. So, you have a total count of open ToFix defects, and there is a decline in such a count needed to hit the deadlines. However, for getting to such a deadline, you need the number of incoming defects to be also fitting into this strategy. If there are a large number of incoming defects, then the team will not be easily able to determine whether their ToFix defect count is decreasing by the amount they want to hit their targets, and this then needs a change to the strategy to determine whether the team will get there or not.
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