How Software Bugs are Prioritised

A Product Manager recently wrote about how Software Bugs aka Problems are prioritised, so I thought I’d share that here.

Prioritisation Spotlight Report 

Product Managers conduct a weekly meeting with other stakeholders to discuss Problems and their effects on our customers. A key output of this meeting is to ensure that we are prioritising the defects that are causing our customers pain or have the ability to do so. 

These Problems can range from being the result of a major incident, recent software upgrades, or internal database monitoring. However, what they share is that they all have the ability to generate customer dissatisfaction. 

The Product Managers have been ensuring we are able to accurately and consistently apply logic to the Prioritisation process. This is a key requirement of the Problem review that allows us to create the prioritisation for Development to work on. 

How does this work? 

The weekly Problem Prioritisation meeting is open to anyone who has a business interest in resolving these software defects for our customers. When discussing these defects as a group, a number of areas are covered, some of the new key areas are below:

Number of cases linked to Problem – this is multiplied by 2 so a Problem with 4 cases will generate a score of 8 for example 

CSAT (Customer Satisfaction score)– This is the level of market impact the defect has, or is expected to have, and is scored in 4 areas; Critical, High, Medium, Low. 

Software upgrade blocker – Does this hold up the ability to patch customers to a newer version of the software

Safety rating – Does this have safety implications? 

The Prioritisation reason – has the problem been raised as an internal escalation,  safety, Information Governance, Security, Customer pain/Escalation, Service Level Agreement, or an Enhancement via the User Defined Roadmap. 

IG – Does this have Information Governance implications? 

Number of users impacted – taken into account based on how widespread the issue is and how many customers are affected. 

What will this allow us to do? 

This is going to help us all become aligned with the vision across the different areas of the business and will enable key stakeholders access to a single source of truth when scoping these items into the team’s backlog. A “Top 100 Problems” list will be updated after the weekly meetings.