Re: [wtp-dev] On the Correct Use of Bug Severities

[Lawrence Mandel <lmandel@xxxxxxxxxx>]

I've created an entry in the committer
FAQ for this. See http://www.eclipse.org/webtools/faq/CommitterFAQ.html#general_4

Lawrence Mandel

Software Developer
IBM Rational Software
Phone: 905 - 413 - 3814   Fax: 905 - 413 - 4920
lmandel@xxxxxxxxxx

Arthur Ryman/Toronto/IBM@IBMCA
Sent by: wtp-dev-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxx

11/17/2005 05:12 PM

Please respond to
"General discussion of project-wide or architectural issues."

To	wtp-dev@xxxxxxxxxxx
cc
Subject	[wtp-dev] On the Correct Use of Bug Severities

On our status call today it became apparent that there is a lot of variability
in the use of the Severity field. We need to triage the bugs for WTP 1.0
so it's important that we adopt a consistent use of severities. Although
this is somewhat of a judgement call, we should use the standard definitions
[1]. 

All component owners should double check the Blocker/Critical/Major bugs
to make sure they are accurately described. Thx. 

Here are the definitions: 

Severity 
This field describes the impact of a bug.

Blocker	Blocks development and/or testing work
Critical	crashes, loss of data, severe memory leak
Major	major loss of function
Minor	minor loss of function, or other problem where easy workaround is present
Trivial	cosmetic problem like misspelled words or misaligned text
Enhancement	Request for enhancement

A user may feel strongly about their favourite bug, but we should still
classify it correctly. We do have some leeway in assigning it a priority,
i.e.if we feel that a bug should be fixed, we can up its priority. P1 should
be reserved for release-defining functions, .i.e we stop ship if P1's are
not fixed. 

Priority 
This field describes the importance and order in which a bug should be
fixed. This field is utilized by the programmers/engineers to prioritize
their work to be done. The available priorities range from P1 (most
important) to P5 (least important.) 

[1] https://bugs.eclipse.org/bugs/bug_status.html#bug_severity

Arthur Ryman,
IBM Software Group, Rational Division

blog: http://ryman.eclipsedevelopersjournal.com/
phone: +1-905-413-3077, TL 969-3077
assistant: +1-905-413-2411, TL 969-2411
fax: +1-905-413-4920, TL 969-4920
mobile: +1-416-939-5063, text: 4169395063@xxxxxxx_______________________________________________
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