Friday, February 17, 2017
Getting to Zero Bugs
Getting to Zero Bugs
Every year since I’ve worked as a Software Development Lead or Manager, I eventually get my teams to “zero bugs”. This year wasn’t different; with the added benefit of helping some charities. My challenge is usually that if the team gets to zero bugs – meaning zero active or resolved bugs – I donate U$100.00 to a charity chosen by each team member (what, with company match, goes up to U$200.00/charity organization).
Why do this? Because of the many times I inherited subsystems with hundreds or thousands of bugs. There is little you can do other than go reading through each and every one of those bugs and then making, based on what is written, a decision someone could have made with far more information on a timely basis, but a long time ago. I know of bugs in subsystems that are 16 years old. I know of bugs really fixed after 10 years. I was once talking with a customer and he cited a bug that was reported 5 years earlier, and for which the fix wasn’t yet delivered. Seeking through the bug database, we could find, based on a few keywords only, both that bug and 3 other duplicate reports of the same issue!
Imagine that a company pays software engineers an average of U$150K/year. Divide that by 52 weeks, then by 5 business days, and then by 8 hours per day. You will arrive at an average cost of U$1.20/minute. Now, consider that just 3 engineers will periodically have to review the bugs, spending an average of 5 minutes reconsidering what to do about each bug. This costs U$18.00. Holding on to just 100 bugs costs U$1,800.00/review. And I’ve really witnessed “triages” with 20 people, going at a pace no faster than 10 minutes/bug, reviewing active, postponed and other kinds of bugs that “crossed milestones or releases”. Sadly, I’m talking about thousands of bugs… That wasn’t healthy!
I’m really proud that – once again – I’m motivated my team to get down to zero bugs. It is becoming increasingly more expensive, but it is by far the donation with the best return on investment for all parts. A win-win-win situation!
Available link for download
