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Wednesday, 4 April 2012

Low priority bugs might cost high

Have you heard any of these?
  • “It is a low priority bug, it is just a matter of Incorrect Text, Icon, Color etc
  • “It is a Usability issue (many think usability issues are of low priority) we can fix it later?”
Now I have a question to the ones who usually make the above statements:
  • Do you buy a new car which has just one hair line scratch on the bonnet? It doesn't stop you from driving the car, though.
Cluster of Low priority bugs (?)
Usability/cosmetic bugs (sorry for the terminology) do not affect the customer from operating the software but a cluster of usability/cosmetic bugs can make the whole product experience awful and can lose the customers.
After all who wants to ride a Ferrari on a highway where there is speed breaker every half a mile? What if I have a luxury and powerful car when the supplement (road) to ride the car is worse (speed breakers)?
In one of the interviews after scoring 100Sachin Tendulkar said  "...... it has made everyone realize, including me, that even after scoring 99 hundreds, it is not easy to score another one ..."

Providing great experience to user from your product is not an easy job. Every bug (known) has to be fixed.
Am I trying to convey that usability issues are high and not low, or vice versa? No, I’m not.
If you agree that priority of a bug varies from customer to customer and a bug reported as low priority by few customers might be high to other few customers. Then, in my opinion, there is NO LOW priority bug, because it is HIGH priority bug to someone else. At least, if not all bugs are equal, they are not LOW.
Which defects to solve/fix first? 
Your team is the best judge…… Consider the outcome of the defect on the entire customer/user base of your product and not only just the one who logged the defect.
At least I do not see a use case wherein the bug is of low priority to all users of the product, otherwise why a defect is logged at all?
So, what say you?

1 comment:

  1. Here is what I say:

    Have we met? You know my email id is public? Write to me and we can meet.

    ReplyDelete