priority Questions - FogBugz Knowledge Exchange

Priority vs. Severity

2009-10-15T20:48:27Z

FogBugz uses a "Priority" system but other issue trackers often opt for "Severity," or even a hybrid of both. What's the difference between "Priority" and "Severity?"

Feature request: Set a priority from case context menu

2009-12-27T12:50:30Z

Why can't i do that?

Set a miletone - yes, but not a priority?

It's a common task of a team lead or manager - to rearrange work by priority.

Case FC1423832

Allow Voting Up / Down of Cases

2011-01-12T23:34:44Z

Feature request for users to be able to vote on how soon cases should be done.

We're in the unfortunate but not uncommon position of demand for software development outstripping supply. I'd like to give my customers a way to have their say in which of the bugs / features we pick up next.

Obviously we use Priority to drive which cases we work on. Even though there are 7 priorities in FogBugz (although I can't for the life of me think why such a carefully crafted system would mandate something so arbitrary as 7 priorities), there are still dozens of cases to choose from. To help us decide which case to pick up next, I'd like to see functionality which allows users (both normal and community) to vote cases up or down, in much the same way that questions on StackExchange or feature requests on UserVoice can be.

Before anyone suggests it, I don't want to go and set up a UserVoice account because that will mean lots of copying case details back and forth between FogBugz and UserVoice, which will be really time consuming and messy. All the info is in FogBugz, so that's where I'd want users to do the voting.

Case FC1465508

Easier support for managing priority

2011-05-25T15:07:20Z

So I have my list of 100 issues assigned to my 3 developers, everything is marked as a priority 4. I change my view to group by developer sorted by priority and now I want to adjust priorities, move some up to 3's and 2's and some down to 5's & 6's. I really like the Edit Area dropdown option beneath the issue table because it changes the area without opening the Edit Issue dialog. I would love to have the same capability with editing priority so that I can stay focused on the list off 100 items and move things around without losing my place. Alternatively editing priority directly on a single entry in the table (similar to setting estimates quickly) would speed up this process and help keep focus.

Thanks!

Can I add additional priorities to FogBugz?

2010-02-23T20:38:22Z

Possible Duplicate:
Can I change the number of available priorities?

I need more than 7 priorities. Can I add more either in the UI or directly in the database?

Case FC1858436

How to Organize Large Initiatives?

2010-09-29T16:37:50Z

We have a client that we handle several projects for, and we would like to be able to organize large "initiatives" for them and prioritize them. These initiatives could possibly contain multiple cases, and also span milestones or even projects. What types of approaches are people using to manage groups of cases like this?

I'm considering creating an "Initiative" case type and using those as the parent case for all "project" related work, and then tightly controlling who can edit/assign cases of that type using the new security features in 8.0 (if they allow it). But I wanted to check first and see what others have done in this regard, as well.

infinite priority rippling

2011-01-26T23:32:44Z

We are pondering the move from Rally to FogBugz, and while Rally has many many problems, one great thing that it does have is what I like to call infinite priority rippling (though I don't think they call it that). They use huge numbers with lots of decimal places to manage priority -- as a user you never actually bother with these numbers but it allows you to drag and drop items to any arbitrary point in your backlog, and everything else just ripples up or down to accommodate. The beauty to this is you never get "priority 1 bloat". It's just one long list and the only thing that really matters is the overall order.

Our app is a hosted web application, so we push continuous small updates as soon as we can build and test them. There are no release cycles to fit into. And the clients and managers are always saying "xyz is really important" but they hardly ever say "xyz is not important". So you're always wanting to move things up and hardly ever wanting to move them down. And in Rally this doesn't matter: I can just ask "is xyz more important than abc?" And they say "Yes!" So I say "okay, is it more important than def?" And they say "uhhh.. well, no. def is still more important." So I drop xyz right between def and abc and I'm done.

But with FB's discrete priority levels, priority 1 inevitably grows larger and larger as we keep adding new "really important" items. And a bloated priority-1 list is basically useless. So to combat the bloat, whenever I move a new item up to priority 1, I have to then choose an existing priority 1 item to move down to priority 2, and then an existing priority 2 item to move down to priority 3, etc. And then if that new important item turns out to be surprisingly fast, well hell, now I gotta go back and manually float everything back up.

Likewise, stuff at lower priorities has a harder time floating to the top -- with discrete priorities it must be done manually, but with infinite priority rippling stuff naturally floats up as you complete the stuff above it (and when you're lucky enough to not be injecting new emergencies and pet projects).

I would appreciate any helpful comments regarding fogbugz techniques I'm missing; future plans to support priority rippling in fogbugz; easier ways to use discrete priorities; reasons why my thinking is just plain wrong, etc ;)

thanks, rob

Can I have fewer than 7 priorities

2009-11-10T09:45:53Z

I would like to have fewer than seven priorities. Is there a way I can do this?

Quick edits on list page

2011-02-14T13:37:50Z

Possible Duplicate:
Feature Request: Allow editing in Grid View

I'd like to see two features appear, both related to quick/multi editing of cases through the list page: 1) Assign cases without leaving list page. Sometimes I don't want to add a comment, I just want to assign and be done with it. Having the assign dropdown be AJAX, or another UI mechanism, would be very advantageous. If you want to assign whilst commenting, you can always use bulk edit.

2) Change Priority without leaving page. Much like changing milestone, changing priority is something which is done frequently from a list page overview, and so it would be useful to turn it into a AJAX request as well.

Thanks!

Feature Request: Vote on features within FogBugz

2011-02-01T20:41:12Z

It would be really nice to allow people to vote things up so if you have a ton of feature you can ween out what ones people don't want as much.

I am not sure if this is already in or not, but didn't see it. It may be better as a plugin.

Case FC2010661

How do you name your seven* priorities?

2010-08-27T21:20:27Z

I know that FogBugz help gives the following as a typical priorities scheme :

Life or death emergency... the roof is actually on fire. Drop everything and fix.
A customer is waiting for this
Very important
Important
Not so important - fix if time
Probably won't fix but worth remembering
Do not fix

...but I'm wondering how others have named these, especially any that are perhaps more concise? I can't imagine #1 actually being "Life or death emergency... the roof is actually on fire. Drop everything and fix." but maybe rather "Emergency." [?]

Is there a way for Community Users to set the Priority when submitting a new case? Maybe through the Custom Fields plugin?

2010-12-16T00:56:12Z

It looks like Title, Project, Area, and comment are the only available fields when Community users add a new case. Is there some way you can choose which fields are available to them?

Our customers would really like to be able to tell us the Priority from their point of view when they are submitting a case, and we would configure our priorities to things like 'Can't get any work done', 'Its a problem but I have a workaround', etc... In any case it would be helpful to allow some other fields to appear to them. Thanks in advance! :-)

Separate Priorities Labels for Scheduled Items vs. Bugs

2010-10-05T18:34:48Z

I'd like to be able to have different priority labels for scheduled items versus bugs. For example, a Priority 1 for a bug would be a "Crash" where a Priority 1 for task would simply be the most immediate item on their schedule. I know I can use backlogging to set tasks but I prefer the simplicity of the priority field.

I've attempted to use terms that work for both bugs and tasks, but the team still finds them confusing. Here's the terms we're using in an attempt to make the descriptions work for both:

1: Critical 2: Urgent 3: Required 4: Optional 5: Ignore

This is OK until you get to #4 and #5 as I don't think a scheduled item should ever be "optional" or "ignored" (what would be the point to schedule them?).

Case FC395102

Priority vs Due Date

2010-10-06T19:17:33Z

I am still new to fogbugz and would like to know what others have found works best. We are using fogbugz for tracking helpdesk issues, programming tasks and network/infrastructure type tasks.

Up to now we have been using Priority as the main way to indicate what needs to be worked on. The problem is that we are constantly adding Priority 1 assignments and then moving moving what were Priority 1 things down to Priority 2 and then Priority 2 stuff down to 3 or up to 1. This is too much work so I am looking for a more practical approach.

I am thinking that using due dates might work better. Anyones thoughts or experiences are welcome.

Thanks Very Much for any insights,

Eddie

How does Priority relate to Milestones with regard to EBS?

2010-10-05T14:32:03Z

So, I'm a bit confused as to how Milestones and Priority interact within the FogBugz world. I've read somewhere that EBS assumes that cases are worked on in order of priority, but what happens when milestones have completion dates and/or hard dependencies on each other?

Also, does EBS only take priority into account within a single project, or does priority apply across all projects?

I suppose what I really would like to know is to what extent are priority and project/milestone orthogonal (or not?)

For example, I found myself wanting to prioritize things within a milestone so that I could easily order cases by milestone, and then by priority to quickly give me an order to work on things for a particular project (priority of projects isn't an issue here), and this also lets me see how the completion date for a milestone would shift if I excluded certain priorities.

However, it then occurred to me that priority is likely to span more than just a milestone, and it might span projects also, at which point my brain gets very confused and wants desperately to have some real-world examples of how others (ie. FogCreek) use priority and milestones for their organization.

So, could you explain how exactly priority and milestones are intended to work, both in terms of day-to-day usage, and also in terms of scheduling and EBS?

Can we change the automatic assigned priority on inbox?

2010-03-06T04:59:08Z

I do not want fogbuz to assign automatically a priority when auto-replying to a inbox message. For some reason it automatically assing the priority, which may cause customer relationship issues when I decide to change the priority

Can different users see different priorities?

2010-02-11T16:31:39Z

We have different groups of people who work with FogBugz, including outside clients. We'd like to have different labels for different clients, so that one client sees 1 - Showstopper and another sees 1 - Urgent.

Adding priority to email notification

2009-12-22T23:01:16Z

Possible Duplicate:
Feature Request: Templated case notification email

Very simple, just need to see priority in the subject of the email notification. We have a local install of fogbugz if that makes a difference.

I have no problems telling developers to log into FB to view the bug etc, but if the dev is hard at work and a Pri 6 comes in, his reaction time should be different from a Pri 1. Can I make this info available in the subject?

How to manage feedback from testers?

2009-12-01T15:31:01Z

What should a tester enter in a bug-tracking database, and how should it be marked?

We just got FogBugz and we love it. However, we are newbies! My manager loved it so much, that our tester is now entering everything she finds in FogBugz.

At first, everything, no matter how small and regardless of the nature of the issue she saw, was entered with the defaults. That means that they all had a Category of BUG, and Priority of Must Fix.

Many of these cases that got entered were things like the following:

•I think the font should be bold here… •This does not seem consistent… •This page needs a return link… •This color is a little had to read… She entered so much stuff it was difficult to find the real bugs. I had to read like 100 cases to find the 4 or 5 cases that really were important.

Misspellings, crashes, missing functionality are all bugs, but are the above type of cases really bugs? I am still not sure how I feel.

We discussed the matter at length. She has started setting the above type of cases with a Priority of "Noted". In addition, we now have another person (the manager) setting the category and priority for these type of cases. They go to him first. He also sets the Milestone.

I appreciate any guidance you can give on the subject.

Thanks.