Introducing time wasters

[Mikhailo Seledtsov]

On 9/20/18, 9:23 AM, Jonathan Gibbons wrote:
> +1 for "urgent" or some similar short meaningful name, along with a 
> guideline that there should be comments justifying the use of the label.
>
> Another reason for a label instead of priority is that it can be more 
> focussed, and can be used in filters/gadgets/dashboards in JBS.
>
> -- Jon
>
+1
>
> On 9/20/18 9:04 AM, jesper.wilhelmsson at oracle.com wrote:
>> OK, I see that this didn't come out as I intended it. The name 
>> "timewaster" is clearly not the best since it can be interpreted as 
>> "this bug is a waste of time - it shouldn't have been filed" - That 
>> was NOT what I meant.
>>
>> My intention was to have a label to indicate that a bug is urgent to 
>> fix because a lot of developers is currently spending time chasing 
>> down the same issue over and over.
>>
>> It has been suggested to increase the priority instead of using a 
>> label. One of the reasons that it ended up as a label is that JBS 
>> don't have a way to express urgency. Priority and urgency are two 
>> different things and should not be mixed, so raising the priority 
>> would send the wrong signal. One example is a broken test in tier 1 
>> that is failing at every run. This bug would cause work for every 
>> engineer who is running through our tests, be it through the submit 
>> forest or in internal test frameworks in our different organisations. 
>> Fixing it is clearly urgent. However, raising the priority would mean 
>> that it becomes a blocker for the release. A broken test should not 
>> block the release.
>>
>> So, back to the name. Since urgency is what we're after, can we call 
>> it "urgent"?
>>
>> As for the "discussed, proposed, and adopted" part - This is where it 
>> is proposed and discussed. (Thanks to everyone who engage in the 
>> discussion!)
>> It hasn't been adopted yet, it is, as I wrote, an experiment.
>>
>> Thanks,
>> /Jesper
>>
>>
>>> On 20 Sep 2018, at 02:04, jesper.wilhelmsson at oracle.com wrote:
>>>
>>> Hi,
>>>
>>> As an experiment we are introducing a new label in JBS, timewaster. 
>>> The label is used to tag bugs that for some reason is wasting 
>>> engineering time. This could for instance be a bug that occurs 
>>> frequently in our testing and causes many engineers to investigate 
>>> the failure in different test runs just to realize it's the same 
>>> issue as have been seen before, or worse, don't realize it is a 
>>> known issue and files a duplicate bug in JBS. Bugs that cause tests 
>>> to fail without a proper explanation may also be considered time 
>>> wasters since several engineers risk to investigate the failures 
>>> just to realize there is no information to be found. There are other 
>>> cases as well and there is some flexibility in the definition. If 
>>> you see an issue that have been wasting your time, feel free to add 
>>> an explanation to why you think it's a time waster and add the label.
>>>
>>> The fact that a bug is wasting engineering time should be taken into 
>>> account when a bug is triaged. A time waster has higher urgency than 
>>> other bugs. This is not really reflected in the priority of a bug so 
>>> the priority is not necessarily changed due to the higher urgency. 
>>> When triaging a time waster, or when adding the label after a bug 
>>> already has been triaged, it's recommended to notify the developers 
>>> that work on the affected component, e.g. by sending an email to the 
>>> proper mailing list and make sure the bug is assigned to someone.
>>>
>>> If you have a time waster assigned to you, please consider fixing it 
>>> asap. If you chose to not work on the issue, you should at least be 
>>> aware that you are choosing to waste more engineering time and 
>>> others will be affected by this choice.
>>>
>>> To see currently open time wasters use the JBS filter Time wasters: 
>>> https://bugs.openjdk.java.net/issues/?filter=35335
>>>
>>> Thanks,
>>> /Jesper
>>>
>