Idea: "Managing" Work Loads With Cells (Team Hierarchies)

Lex Spoon lex at cc.gatech.edu
Mon Oct 6 14:13:51 UTC 2003


To divide up the work, it helps to assign bugs (or patches or issues in
general) to packages when possible.  Also, it helps ifg each package has
a designated maintainer.  Right now, packages *do* have some sort of
maintainer: the one designated on SqueakMap.  A decent way to manage
things is that the maintainer(s) is responsible for at least delegating
each bug to someone else.

Regarding bug-fixing teams, a great way to do this is actually
bug-fixing parties.  That way, people who happen to be free on the
particular day it happens can jump on in, without worrying about
volunteering for a project they won't have time for.  To aid bug-fixing
parties, it helps if bugs are tagged with a severity level; that way the
bug fixers can concentrate on the oldest and most severe bugs, instead
of having to tral through the whole database.




> Also...I wonder if around the world there are hundreds
> or thousands of people who may be using Squeak -- or
> one day millions! -- but who never feed back their
> experiences, bug reports and suggestions. With a cell-based
> hierarchy it might be possible to harness the power of
> many more people than is the case today.


I wonder, though, if it is possible to harness this power *without*
needing them to organize so much.  The bugs we need to try hardest to
capture, are the ones found by end users who simply notice something
peculiar.  The bug fixing power we need to try hardest to capture, is
the people who find a few free hours and want to donate them to Squeak. 
In both cases, the administrativia needs to be very light so that the
people aren't driven off.


-Lex



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