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From: kambic@iccgcc.decnet.ab.com
Newsgroups: comp.software-eng
Subject: Re: Software Quality
Message-ID: <4235.2805a36f@iccgcc.decnet.ab.com>
Date: 12 Apr 91 17:09:18 GMT
References: <36650001@hpopd.pwd.hp.com> <3955.27ee3172@iccgcc.decnet.ab.com> <1853@manta.NOSC.MIL> <1991Apr2.200958.8208@spool.cs.wisc.edu>
Lines: 32

In article <1991Apr2.200958.8208@spool.cs.wisc.edu>, dparter@shorty.cs.wisc.edu (David Parter) writes:
>>In article <36650001@hpopd.pwd.hp.com>, daves@hpopd.pwd.hp.com (Dave Straker) writes:

> If a specific member of the team is producing buggy code from month to
> month, that is, the quality of his or her work is siginificantly worse
> than that of the rest of the team, the other members of the team,
> probably including management, already know this. 
> 
> I was about to go on about what metrics are good for, but it is covered
> in the second sentence of the quote above from Humphry:
> 
> 	"[Process data] ... Its purpose is to illuminate the product
> 	 being developed and to provide an informed basis for improving
> 	 the process."

I don't think that there is an answer here yet.  If the other members of the
team and management know about the bug issue, how did they find out about it? 
Is it quantitatively within the bounds of acceptable number of bugs for the
current stage of the product and company, or is it greater than that bound?  If
the number is greater, then what do you do?  Quoting Humphrey is not a solution
to the problem.  If a problem resides in the code coming from one person,
then how do you improve the process without taking some action with respect to
that person that includes the measured information on bug rates?  What
does the team do, ignore it?  What does management do?  Say that they know that
the code is buggy but that no action can be taken because that action would be
using a metric to evaluate a person?  How about an answer?  What do you do? 
Say you are in a level five organization, and want to improve the process but
you have to keep removing bugs introduced by one person.  What is the action
you take?  

GXKambic
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