#60 closed enhancement (fixed)

current "Priority:" setting isn't useful

Reported by: zooko Owned by: somebody
Priority: major Milestone: undecided
Component: dev-infrastructure Version: 0.6.0
Keywords: Cc:
Launchpad Bug:

Description

I'd like to configure trac so that we can use "Priority" to keep track of which tickets are more urgent. Currently two of the values are urgencies and two of them are importances. I think I would be happier if they were named "1", "2", "3", and "4".

Change History (10)

comment:1 Changed at 2007-06-04T22:37:11Z by evilrob

urgency and importance are two orthogonal dimensions oft conflated.

it sounds to me like you want an 'urgency' field to organise tickets on, which imho should be distinct from importance.

and it seems like 'importance' is the more natural interpretation of 'priority' - or is at least the interpretation implied by the existing values.

minor/major/critical/blocker is a pretty standard descriptor for bugs in bug tracking, in my experience. eliminating that in order to support urgency tracking seems like a mistake.

(and in reply to a question in #53 -

  1. 'critical' means critical for the successful delivery of the denoted milestone)
  2. neither urgrency nor importance are the 'right' place to track 'interest'

)

comment:2 Changed at 2007-06-06T19:50:41Z by warner

  • Component changed from code to dev-infrastructure

comment:3 Changed at 2007-06-28T16:06:29Z by zooko

So what do you want, functionally, out of the bug tracker's ticket status fields? How should we use them?

What I want is:

(a) when it lists things in descending order, with some things in different colors, I want to notice the things that I ought to be working on next, because they are closer to the top and in different colors.

(b) I want to communicate to other people what I'm working on next by changing some field of the ticket.

I don't currently see why I would want to mark some tickets as minor/major/critical/blocker, other than as a proxy to achieve (a) and (b), above.

comment:4 Changed at 2007-09-25T04:19:12Z by zooko

  • Version changed from 0.2.0 to 0.6.0

comment:5 Changed at 2007-09-25T04:19:40Z by zooko

  • Milestone set to undecided

comment:6 Changed at 2008-06-01T21:02:43Z by warner

  • Milestone changed from eventually to undecided

comment:7 Changed at 2008-06-07T00:17:04Z by zooko

  • Resolution set to fixed
  • Status changed from new to closed

I just removed "blocker" and "trivial" from the list of priorities, leaving "critical", "major", and "minor".

I've noticed myself wanting to use "critical" to highlight issues which can cause harm to customers (security holes, data-loss issues). "major" is the standard value. Most issues ought to be considered "major" in my opinion, because someone cares about them (or they wouldn't have shown up on the tracker). Occasionally someone who cares about an issue decides to mark it as "minor" in order to convey that they care about it less than they care about most other issues.

comment:8 Changed at 2008-06-07T01:29:31Z by warner

It is unfortunate that now all the ticket lists are bright yellow.

What harm were "blocker" and "trivial" causing?

comment:9 Changed at 2008-06-10T02:52:10Z by zooko

  • Resolution fixed deleted
  • Status changed from closed to reopened

comment:10 Changed at 2008-09-24T13:21:45Z by zooko

  • Resolution set to fixed
  • Status changed from reopened to closed
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