Investigation-a-palooza

[hrj]

 So my department (and our QA partners) held an intensive "investigation closure" session today to try to power through some of the (theoretically) more simple investigations we have in our backlog. Out of approximately 100 investigations, half of them were "low impact" items scheduled for focused attention. Of those, we managed to close about 60%. The theory is that this will free up attention and resources to work on the remaining deviations. The problem I see is that we close all the "low hanging fruit" and now are left will all the investigations that require more resources and more support from other departments. So we look good (in terms of numbers) in the short run, but I don't know that it makes any difference in the long run. And yet everyone will point to the numbers for this event and say, "See, you could do this all the time if you tried."

Gah.

Comments

[hudebnik]

Once or twice a year, my work team has a "fixit week" when we set aside all our Big Projects and work on cleaning up the niggling little things that have been around for a long time but never got to the top of a priority queue. It usually produces good bug-closure numbers, and a feeling of cleanliness, but everybody (on the team and above) recognizes that it's not the normal mode of operation.

[hrj]

The thing about these "minor" investigations is that they all still have deadlines and closure requirements. So it isn't a case where they would accumulate forever. We also have non-investigation "improvement" projects that are meant to be fit into the schedule when we have time. Those are the ones that never actually get advanced because we are never less than behind on deadlines.

[beanolc]

I get really frustrated by these types of end of X metrics in my industry.

[hrj]

The thing about deviation metrics is that the input is both subjective and not in our control. What counts as a deviation? How do we prevent them from happening in the first place?

[zeborah]

Sometimes it can be a morale boost to have a smaller number of things hanging over you even though it's not a smaller amount of work. A bit personality- (and mood-) dependent, I think. But you certainly don't want any pencil-pushers counting all fixes as equal!!

[hrj]

True, it can be like tidying up the small things around the house when you can't tackle the big projects.