• (cs) in reply to Outlaw Programmer
    Outlaw Programmer:
    Mr Mr:
    At my work our tracker has 3 priorities (Low, Normal and High). Most people respects them and uses them wisely...except that one jerk

    Oh, that reminds me. The aforementioned Lotus Notes bug tracking system had 2 fields for this, "Priority" and "Severity." Priority was a number between 1 (highest priority) and 6, and Severity could have values of "Blocker", "Critical", "Major", etc.

    No one could figure out what they meant, though. You'd get weird mixes that didn't make any sense. I think I've seen this in CodeBeamer, also...

    I don't see any mixes that don't make sense. A bug where the program crashes if you type the letter "Q" while standing on your head and whistling "Dixie" could be a low-priority critical bug: it's critical because the program crashes, but low-priority because nobody's going to trigger it. On the other hand, a bug where the splashscreen is replaced with Goatse would be a high-priority cosmetic bug. You can get inappropriate or inaccurate mixes, but not ones that are nonsense.

  • will (unregistered)

    http://www.despair.com/achievement.html

  • notJoeKing (unregistered) in reply to Grovesy
    Grovesy:
    hmm, his first name was Paul... Has (had in my case) a dislike for Jira. If 'paul' used Index cards, I really am wondering if I'm the subject of this... except I was the team lead and forced index cards on everyone else :)

    ** Why: The team, Project manager, developers, testers were all in the same room, we had several large whiteboards... we went 'manual' with index cards for tasks, a section stuck up for 'to do', and names with cards underneath in another section of the board.

    Managment hated this, as they couldn't 'see' what was going on.. despite the fact that all they had to do was open our door and look at the wall instead of hitting a url. Or just wait till the weekly managment update meeting or status report email to be sent out.

    Everyone else liked it... even the project manager ditched his Gant chart.

    I've been at a company that probably used this method until they got too big and started passing papers with assignments on them around.

    It was great! My manager would walk up to me with several all the time, never really knowing how many I had and would tell me what my top priority was.

    Everything else went into a stack on my desk that only grew because there were always more to do than time to do them (even working 55 hours a week) and the stack was never my "top priority."

    When I left after 2.5 years, I handed the 100+ papers I had left on my desk back to the manager. I heard they went to OnTime after that... Wonder if they'll ever get all the past features entered into OnTime before they loose all their current customers...

    Software FTW!

  • Jim (unregistered) in reply to Aaron
    Aaron:
    Jim:
    That's why we have status meetings, also gives a chance to raise issues directly, instead of entering them into some tool where it goes unnoticed. This way, one can also stress the urgency of certain issues.
    Right, because frequent status meetings take way less time than the 30 seconds involved in adding/editing a case, and couldn't possibly have any negative effect on productivity. Plus, raising all issues through status meetings carries the added benefit of never having any part of your work record or priorities documented, which is excellent when it comes time for a performance review and/or somebody comes to you with an "urgent" request and you need to explain why you can't finish it in the next 30 seconds.

    Yep, issue tracking is useless, and status meetings rock. Oh, and programmers are also more productive in open cubicle farms, and all you ever need for a functional spec are a couple of pieces of paper submitted by users with one or two scribbled paragraphs. And performance optimization is a waste of time. Most importantly, a project is deemed successful as soon as the first version ships.

    Right?

    Who said anything about frequent? one per week, 30-45 minutes, never more. Issues are raised in the meeting and handled by the project manager. Raised issues get added to the plan once you provide estimates, and are tracked. That's his job, right?

    And about performance optimization - PREMATURE performance optimization is useless. One should code for readability first, and IF there are performance issues, then one identifies performance bottlenecks and does something about them. Coding for performance leads to buggy code that can be hard to read.

    Oh, and what's required here is an SRS, and SDS, and, if the project is sufficiently large, a functional spec. ALL of which must obtain sign-off from architecture/tech leads/etc...which means any ambiguity, or un-clear requirements must be cleared up before coding begins.

  • Jon Silvers (unregistered)

    That was seriously lol funny. Thanks for writing this. I'm forwarding it onto others.

  • Jon (unregistered) in reply to DeLos
    DeLos:
    Nice. That is my usual line. "sure that works, in theory. Then again, communism is GREAT ... in theory"
    So your theory is that communism doesn't work? I sense a contradiction here.
  • (cs) in reply to NotAnEnglishMajor
    NotAnEnglishMajor:
    durnurd:
    But the real WTF is that he's got outer space at only 24 miles altitude.

    Well, look at it this way. If the rocks used to build the pyramid are sufficiently dense, the pyramid will have sufficient gravitational pull to make a "dip" in the atmosphere near the pyramid, thus ensuring that the tip of the pyramid is at the exact spot where the atmosphere ends (at 24 miles).

    If it were sufficiently dense to do that, wouldn't it just sort of sink through the earth's crust? Planets, by definition, have a habit of smoothing out really big bumps like a 24 mile tall pyramid.

    --NotAn

    If the pyramid were very dense, the center of gravity of the Earth (plus the pyramid) would move over towards the side of the Earth where the pyramid was.

    Because of the way the atmosphere works (it's a pressure spectrum) the distance to outer space from the base of the pyramid would be MORE than it was before the pyramid was built.

    I would suggest building the pyramid out of super-light rocks (and as hollow as the required stability will allow), and building a very tall tower on the diametrically opposite spot on the Earth's crust. At the top of the tower should be placed a very heavy point mass.

    The exact length of the tower should be chosen so that the atmosphere shifts away from the pyramid exactly sufficient to place the "border of the atmosphere" (which is surprisingly hard to define) is as depicted.

    All of this, of course, is "obviously implied" by the spec.

  • NotAnEnglishMajor (unregistered) in reply to Maurits
    Maurits:
    NotAnEnglishMajor:
    durnurd:
    But the real WTF is that he's got outer space at only 24 miles altitude.

    Well, look at it this way. If the rocks used to build the pyramid are sufficiently dense, the pyramid will have sufficient gravitational pull to make a "dip" in the atmosphere near the pyramid, thus ensuring that the tip of the pyramid is at the exact spot where the atmosphere ends (at 24 miles).

    If it were sufficiently dense to do that, wouldn't it just sort of sink through the earth's crust? Planets, by definition, have a habit of smoothing out really big bumps like a 24 mile tall pyramid.

    --NotAn

    If the pyramid were very dense, the center of gravity of the Earth (plus the pyramid) would move over towards the side of the Earth where the pyramid was.

    Because of the way the atmosphere works (it's a pressure spectrum) the distance to outer space from the base of the pyramid would be MORE than it was before the pyramid was built.

    I would suggest building the pyramid out of super-light rocks (and as hollow as the required stability will allow), and building a very tall tower on the diametrically opposite spot on the Earth's crust. At the top of the tower should be placed a very heavy point mass.

    The exact length of the tower should be chosen so that the atmosphere shifts away from the pyramid exactly sufficient to place the "border of the atmosphere" (which is surprisingly hard to define) is as depicted.

    All of this, of course, is "obviously implied" by the spec.

    COOL! This plan should be submitted to NASA. At first glance it is no crazier than anchoring one end of a super long carbon nanotube cable to the earth and the other end to a huge mass in geosynchronous orbit, then running an elevator up and down the cable.

    This should be run as an agile project so we don't need to worry about all the little details, like feasibility, up front. Just start building and hope it gets done before the budget runs out. One week sprints are needed because we need lots of meetings. Meetings are our friend...

    --NotAn

  • Liberator (unregistered)

    I just like the JIRA catchline:

    'Because you've got issues'

  • Bill (unregistered) in reply to Ubersoldat
    The Real WTF is that they use a paid tool when you have excellent OSS bug tracking software out there... bugzilla anyone?

    Bugzilla is awful. Unfortunately most other OSS bug trackers aren't any better - too much pointless configuration that just gets in the way, stupid defaults and awkward UIs.

    JIRA isn't perfect, but it is worth the money.

  • Dude (unregistered)

    Is there going to be a Valentine's Day WTF???

  • lazarus84 (unregistered) in reply to Erik

    Sameera is a girl's name. Way to single out the female on the team for reproductive duties...

  • Peter Kneale (unregistered)

    Bug Tracker is pretty good. http://ifdefined.com/bugtrackernet.html

    Customisation per project is a little lacking but its certainly a fast, light weight way to capture issues. The report is quite flexible and searching quite powerful. Written in asp.net and stored in sql server.

    Plus hes got a list of comparisons to other similar products http://ifdefined.com/blog/post/2007/10/Links-to-other-comparisons-of-issue-trackers.aspx

  • Not telling you.... (unregistered)

    The place I work at, a reasonably big appliance company has acquired a bunch of companies over the years. So obviously over time we ended up with a few groups that all used their own bugtracker, it being bugzilla or gnats or some third one.

    Of course as Technical Support has to support all the products, and as the products are cooperating etc, they had to both pick the right bugtracker and sometimes file the same bug in twice. Pretty annoying. So to simplify the thing, somewhere in the upper echelons, it was decided to pick 1 bugtracker for all to use - perfectly reasonable decision.

    They picked gnats...

  • (cs)

    An instant classic!

  • Bob (unregistered)

    If nothing else, a bugtracker (bugs, features, etc..) is nice to have when someone comes up to you and says "you know, your (opensource) program could use X feature" you can just reply "Yeah, you're right. Put it in the bugtracker", and that'll be that.

    I've met people who don't "get" bugtrackers, but I've yet to meet anyone who's actively against them. I didn't know you existed.

  • Photon (unregistered)

    Just for the record, jira is indeed an exceptionally bad implementation of a bugtracker. It was probably built by beancounters for beancounters for the sole purpose of squeezing the most out of their "human capital".

    If your goal is to actually get shit one instead of creating meaningless statistics then I'd suggest to look at one of the better impls: mantisbt or redmine.

    Ofcourse there are other good options but these two seem to lead the pack at least in the OSS arena.

    A good ticket-system is priceless, even for small teams. I have never met anyone who would not learn that quickly. But obviously if all you get to know is the horrors of JIRA then it's easy to get turned off...

  • /dev/null (unregistered) in reply to Stupidumb

    http://www.mantisbt.org/ http://phpbt.sourceforge.net/

  • OMG Geography! (unregistered)

    For the record, the pyramids are not in the Sahara desert, but rather some thousand miles to the east, in Egypt.

  • Xenocide (unregistered) in reply to mauhiz
    1. Profit!
  • (cs) in reply to /dev/null
    /dev/null:
    http://www.mantisbt.org/ http://phpbt.sourceforge.net/

    We (small company) use Mantis quite happily.

    Does anyone have an opinion about FogBugz (as opposed to an opinion about its progenitor/promoter)?

  • Revenger (unregistered)

    Use the force, Luke!

  • dkf (unregistered) in reply to OMG Geography!
    OMG Geography!:
    For the record, the pyramids are not in the Sahara desert, but rather some thousand miles to the east, in Egypt.
    According to Wikipedia, the Sahara extends to the Red Sea. Totally encompassing the area where the pyramids are. Looks like the Real WTF?! is your amazing skill at geography.
  • Ajk (unregistered) in reply to Stupidumb
    Stupidumb:
    Can anyone recommend any free bug tracking software? Using Excel to track bugs is a pain.

    We use bugzilla cause our manager is so cheap, other departments in our MNC use tracker but he wanted to save a buck. Works fairly well and is quite simple to setup.

  • thc4k (unregistered)

    funny how he started with "lets do it completely different" and came back with "lets do it all the same, except on paper" ... his problem wasn't the tracking software, it was having to type instead of write ...

  • Michael (unregistered) in reply to NotAnEnglishMajor
    NotAnEnglishMajor:
    durnurd:
    Well, look at it this way. If the rocks used to build the pyramid are sufficiently dense, the pyramid will have sufficient gravitational pull to make a "dip" in the atmosphere near the pyramid, thus ensuring that the tip of the pyramid is at the exact spot where the atmosphere ends (at 24 miles).

    If it were sufficiently dense to do that, wouldn't it just sort of sink through the earth's crust?

    --NotAn

    Well actually, durnard: no, and NotAn: not necessarily.

    If we successfully build the pyramid, its gravity will attract more gases to that area, so the atmosphere would bulge upwards slightly above the pyramid.
    If you look at it another way, the pyramid would shift the centre of gravity of the planet slightly towards the pyramid, making the 'atmospheric globe' shift as well, meaning a thinner atmosphere layer on the opposite side of the planet.

    So it's most likely impossible to build a solid heavy pyramid to get outside the atmosphere.... unless it's a very pointy one. :o)

    -Mike

  • Michael (unregistered) in reply to NotAnEnglishMajor
    NotAnEnglishMajor:
    If it were sufficiently dense to do that, wouldn't it just sort of sink through the earth's crust? Planets, by definition, have a habit of smoothing out really big bumps like a 24 mile tall pyramid.

    --NotAn

    Not necessarily, NotAn.... just check out Mars' Olympus Mons:

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olympus_Mons

    27 km high (about 17 miles)..... is that high enough for ya?

    Of course, it depends a little on what the planetary core is like.... whether it is very hot and molten or cool and solid. --Mike

  • Email (unregistered)
    Alex Papadimoulis:
    “Seriously,” Paul said throwing up his hands in the middle of a team meeting
    Okeydokey, why did he eat his hands in the first place?
  • (cs)

    bugtracking == excellent. Jira != excellent.

    Big thumbs up to the pyramid guy, however. :-)

  • (cs)

    Yeah, bug-tracking software is the greatest advance in software development since the IDE. And it's actually useful, unlike the IDE, which promotes brainless repetition and guesswork over actually learning your damn tools and creating new ones as needed to automate repetitive tasks.

    Damn kids, get off my lawn 'fore I take my cane to ya!

  • VAXcat (unregistered)

    He misspelled "description".

  • CJudge (unregistered) in reply to durnurd
    durnurd:
    But the real WTF is that he's got outer space at only 24 miles altitude.

    Well, look at it this way. If the rocks used to build the pyramid are sufficiently dense, the pyramid will have sufficient gravitational pull to make a "dip" in the atmosphere near the pyramid, thus ensuring that the tip of the pyramid is at the exact spot where the atmosphere ends (at 24 miles).

    You've got that backwards, it would make a bulge.

  • (cs) in reply to relaxing
    relaxing:
    dlikhten:
    mauhiz:
    Egyptians had JIRA (on papyrus), that's why they could build such great buildings. That is how they did it :

    1. steal papyrus

    2. use JIRA

    3. ?????

    4. Pyramids!

  • ?????

  • Profit!

  • Stargate!

    • (The WTF is definitely 24 miles as the distance to space. Someone should submit a bug rep- oh.)

    Imagine the size of the Goa'uld mothership that would land on a pyramid that size...

  • (cs)

    In my first job (back in the mid 90s) the team initially used a Word document, until I eventually put an access database... Wish we had JIRA/Bugzilla then.

    There's actually a recent study that shows that neither heavyweight bug repositories nor notes or to-dos are sufficient.

    <SHAMELESS_SELF_PROMOTION> By the way, if any Eclipse/Java programmers are reading this: As part of my doctoral work I am developing a personal memory-aid for developers. Using a couple of popups, it allows you to capture those short reminders you never bother to open a bug report for or even write a to-do. It stores them separately from the code (so you don't have to edit them). It then presents them chronologically interleaved with your actions (sort of a memory extension), and it also lets you know about them when you're in related methods. So if you are reading method foo() that is invoking bar(), and you have left a reminder in bar() (or some other knowledge), you can know about it and rush to fix bar().

    It's still an early prototype, but I'd love to hear comments and suggestions, and of course, find people to try it out. PM me if you're interested.

    </SHAMELESS_SELF_PROMOTION>

  • Cpt (unregistered) in reply to mauhiz
    mauhiz:
    Egyptians had JIRA (on papyrus), that's why they could build such great buildings. That is how they did it :
    1. steal papyrus
    2. use JIRA
    3. ?????
    4. Pyramids!
    Ehm... underpants anyone? Southpark rules
  • Sam (unregistered) in reply to Stupidumb
    Stupidumb:
    Can anyone recommend any free bug tracking software? Using Excel to track bugs is a pain.
    Our company uses RT
  • Adam Ernst (unregistered)

    The Real WTF is that they don't use FogBugz...

  • John E. Vincent (unregistered)

    The problem is that people force JIRA into places where it's not designed to work. It's all agile this and agile that and jira issue this and jira issue that.

    Meanwhile I'm supposed to be doing sysop-style work. Jira is fine for bug/issue tracking. It is NOT a support system.

  • vitaminjeff (unregistered)
    1. Use JIRA.
    2. ???
    3. PROFIT!!!
  • (cs) in reply to uricmu
    uricmu:
    In my first job (back in the mid 90s) the team initially used a Word document, until I eventually put an access database... Wish we had JIRA/Bugzilla then.

    There's actually a recent study that shows that neither heavyweight bug repositories nor notes or to-dos are sufficient.

    <SHAMELESS_SELF_PROMOTION> By the way, if any Eclipse/Java programmers are reading this: As part of my doctoral work I am developing a personal memory-aid for developers. Using a couple of popups, it allows you to capture those short reminders you never bother to open a bug report for or even write a to-do. It stores them separately from the code (so you don't have to edit them). It then presents them chronologically interleaved with your actions (sort of a memory extension), and it also lets you know about them when you're in related methods. So if you are reading method foo() that is invoking bar(), and you have left a reminder in bar() (or some other knowledge), you can know about it and rush to fix bar().

    It's still an early prototype, but I'd love to hear comments and suggestions, and of course, find people to try it out. PM me if you're interested.

    </SHAMELESS_SELF_PROMOTION>

    That's considered "Doctoral work" these days?

    Do us all a favour and go back to programming Commodore 64s. Just a suggestion.

  • Grobbendonk (unregistered) in reply to Photon
    Photon:
    Just for the record, jira is indeed an exceptionally bad implementation of a bugtracker. It was probably built by beancounters for beancounters for the sole purpose of squeezing the most out of their "human capital".

    I can tell you've never used it (or if you have, you've been stuck with a badly thought out implementation)

    It's actually fantastically bad at producing beancounter information, and exceptionally good at handling day-to-day development type issues. Written by developers for developers (and that shows)

  • Anonymous (unregistered)

    I think this might be more antics from Paul (and Pete, who slaved until his hands bled and then starved): http://blog.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.view&friendID=2209741&blogID=307111998

  • mcow (unregistered) in reply to mauhiz
    mauhiz:
    Egyptians had JIRA (on papyrus), that's why they could build such great buildings. That is how they did it :
    1. steal papyrus
    2. use JIRA
    3. ?????
    4. Pyramids!

    The hieroglyphics there on step 3 don't render correctly in my browser.

  • Corey Trager (unregistered) in reply to Hatshepsut

    I think FogBugz is great. I'm the author of a free open source app, BugTracker.NET (at http://ifdefined.com/bugtrackernet.hmtl) and for sure FogBugz was/is my biggest inspiration.

    I'm guessing, though, from your short list that you are looking for something apache/php based?

  • The Good Onion (unregistered)

    Sahara is not in Egypt.

  • Jae (unregistered) in reply to mauhiz

    I enjoyed reading this article. I'm not new to bug tracking software, but I am new to JIRA and I like it a lot.

  • Sameen (unregistered)

    With Jira around, I feel like I have 8 bosses :)

  • Mark (unregistered)

    Everything has it's place. Paper is great for notes; CRC cards are great in planning games; word docs; email; and excel can also be fine.

    But WTF when people create entire issue tracking tools on their own using paper; excel; or word files.

    JIRA is great since it makes it hard for people to hide their dirty little secrets and it brings problems into the light.

  • (cs)

    Why did he only assign one person to do the reproduction? That's not going to work. And he didn't specify what kind of hardware to use (sandstone? granite?).

  • Patrick (unregistered)

    Bug tracking and issue tracking systems are often implemented as a part of integrated project management systems. This approach allows including bug tracking and fixing in a general product development process, fixing bugs in several product versions, automatic generation of a product knowledge base and release notes.

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