Taming the Bug Mountain

Everywhere I’ve worked we’ve had our own version of the Bug Mountain - the pile of bugs that never seems to shift from one release to the next, if anything it just gets bigger.

Even devoting whole team sprints to bug fixing doesn’t seem to make much of a dent.

At FreeAgent we’ve started using a holistic and pragmatic approach to bug fixing that’s keeping everyone happy. Even the support team!

In this session I’ll talk you through our journey from Mountain to molehill and discuss some of the things that haven’t worked so well for us along the way.

Most importantly I’ll try to get to the bottom of why strategies did or didn’t work so you can apply them to your own situation.

Transcript

1. Taming the Bug Mountain Ceri Shaw - @cerishaw FreeAgent
2. Why I care about bugs
4. FA-1227 FA-1001 FA-1301 FA-1298 FA-978 FA-1078 FA-1203 FA-602 FA-1156 FA-1204 FA-1269 FA-1230 FA-1098 FA-1143 FA-697 FA-449 FA-1321 FA-1062 FA-1034 FA-1012 FA-946 FA-1152 FA-1158 FA-1142 FA-1141 FA-1071 FA-1201 FA-1194 FA-1193 FA-1187 FA-1163 FA-888 FA-1311 FA-1210 FA-1281 FA-1287 FA-1284 FA-1300 FA-1254 FA-1345 FA-1323 FA-1233 FA-1338 FA-1271 FA-1255 FA-1217 FA-1207 FA-1202 Big heap of bugs
7. Things that didn’t work…
8. Bug Monday/Friday/ Sprint etc…
9. Bugs in Projects
10. Flagged Bugs
11. Bug Cull
12. Failings • No buy-in • Ignoring small features • Support team views not considered • Wasted time investigating right fix
13. Holistic Solution
14. Support Issue Forum
16. Aggressively Close Bugs
17. Investigate ! & ! Define
18. Prioritised ! Backlog
19. Small Features prioritised against Bugs
20. Create Specs
21. Was that enough?
23. Could do better!
24. Reduce Incoming Bugs
25. Legacy bugs
26. ‘Prompt’ bugs
28. Where are the bugs?
29. Bug Prediction at Google http://google-engtools.blogspot.co.uk/2011/12/bug-prediction- at-google.html
30. Analyse commits
31. Time
33. 13.6293 - company.rb ! 10.9993 - bank_account_entry.rb ! 10.1866 - invoice.rb ! 8.8870 - application_helper.rb ! 7.9151 - uk_company.rb ! 6.9373 - bank_account_entries_controller.rb ! 6.7072 - payroll/period.rb ! 6.2657 - invoices_controller.rb ! 5.5173 - draft_bank_account_entry.js.coffee ! 5.1833 - self_assessment/version3_return.rb ! 5.1388 - banking/transaction.js.coffee.cjsx ! 5.1278 - expense.rb ! 4.7651 - bank_account_entry.js.coffee God Class Very Legacy Dumping! Ground? New Work
34. Suggest areas for refactoring
35. Has it worked?
36. Next Steps
37. Conclusions
38. Collaboration
39. Be Ruthless with Bugs
40. Investigate
41. Where ! & When
42. Woohoo - great to be able to choose the user on the very first expense creation :-) Excellento!!! There is a GOD!! lol What a hero! That's brilliant! This should be a popular one on Twitter ;) ***4 years, 21 days I have waited for this wonderful moment! Thank you so much Guys, I'm cracking open the Champagne tonight!!!***! Love from a very happy bunny! Yay!! :) Thanks folks. you'll make the entire support team's dreams come true!
43. Questions?
44. Thank you! Ceri Shaw - @cerishaw ceri@freeagent.com