Suppose you're using a bug tracker (say, fogBUGZ, just to pick one out of the air) and a major new feature is to be added. Would you track it as a single item?

For example, you're the project manager for Excel and it doesn't do any charting at all. Management says, "Add charting!" and provides a lengthy spec sheet (ha!). Do you put "Add charting feature" as a single feature, or do you create lots of smaller items that contribute to the whole, or both, or what?

-- Anonymous, August 29, 2001

Answers

As a software lead or manager, you would like to keep track of what features are the buggiest. (for example; what features are designed poorly, what features tend to break other things, etc.)

When I use our defect tracking tool, features are broken down into the smallest parts it makes sense to track bugs against. (If testers won't be able to tell what file the bug is found in, it doesn't make sense to break it up that way.) This way you can get good information on where the bugs are and do something about it.

-- Anonymous, August 30, 2001

Most of the bug-tracking systems I've seen have the ability to specify bugs at a fairly fine granularity. I.e. bugs are tracked not just by project but by individual product, product version, product platform, product module (feature), and so on. I'd add a module to the product for the charting feature and then write a number of bugs against it for the major components of the feature. (I'd then assign them to an engineer for estimation.)

-- Anonymous, September 01, 2001