Adam White

To follow up my post on weak measurement being better than no measurement I decided to write some things I think can affect the ability of a development team to turn bugs around and hence make the use of the metrics from past releases not useful.

- Starting testing too early
- Starting testing too late
- Incorrect Risk Assessments by testers/developers/product managers
- Misunderstood Features by testers, developers, project team
- Constantly changing features (code churn/ greater risk of regression bugs)
- Inexperienced and/or Immature coders/testers
- Vacations/Sick days/Personal days/emergencies/snow days/Halo 3/WOW was released yesterday days
- Too many bugs carried over from last release.
- Unknown changes being checked in
- Misunderstood Features
- 3rd party applications cause problems
- Software licenses run out for development/test software.
- Busted Build process
- Product won’t install
- No business spec
- No Technical Spec
- Not enough hardware
- Incorrect hardware
- Not enough power to run the hardware
- Hardware/hardrives die unexpectedly (Does this ever happen expectedly?)
- Not enough People
- No Unit Tests
- Incorrect Time Estimates (oxymoron?)
- Miscommunication of vital pieces of information
- Features not cast/frozen/signed off on or otherwise stopped changing
- No requirements/Unclear requirements
- Bug system goes down.
- Internet connection goes down
- Power goes out
- Key stakeholders not available
- More time spent in meetings than fixing/testing software
- Customer problems take senior resources away.
- Meeting Interruptions/Coding interruptions/testing interruptions