(…) when I compare a UI bug such as “The Help button is not in the usual location” to “The application crashes when I try to save”, it’s easy to see how a UI bug ends up with a low priority. In fact, I totally agree.
The problem is the scale that the bug tracking system uses. The bug priorities are all about the function of the software, not the usability of the software. In practice this means that having the application crash or fail to save data is considered a disaster – highest priority. But having the user give up and stop using the software isn’t on our scale.
The bug system scale measures whether or not the software functions – does it do what it’s supposed to without errors? And this is something that we can easily quantify. When there’s a problem we get a bug report, then the software engineers try to reproduce the bug and then track down the problematic code and fix it.
Since UI problems rarely cause anything resembling a crash, they end up in the “low priority” bucket nearly every time. (…)
And there’s absolutely no system for representing these problems in the bug system. Bugs are not evaluate in the aggregate – they’re looked at individually. No one will die from one cut, so each bug is unimportant. But taken together, they are a bigger problem.
Źródło Death by a Thousand Cuts, Two Rivers Flowing, Hagan Rivers
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