Tracker status values proposal
This is a procedural proposal about the specification tracker settings: At the moment the tracker artifact status are the gridforge default: open, pending, closed. These cannot be changed but new values can be defined. I propose to augment them with the following values: resolved, fixed, deferred. The meaning of these values would be as follows: Open: the issue has been proposed by a member but not yet accepted by the WG. Pending: the issue has been accepted and is still pending resolution by the WG Resolved: The WG has decided and accepted a resolution, but the actions are still pending Fixed: The editor has completed the proposed actions, but the actions are awaiting verification. Closed: The issue has been resolved and is reflected in the work products of the WG. The completion of the changes must be reported by the primary editor and verified by the secondary editor (or other WG member). Deferred: The WG has decided that the issue has some merit but that it should not be addressed in the upcoming revision of the spec. And deferred items would later be moved to the post-v1 tracker. Note that all this is not my invention. I am 'stealing' it from the ogsa-wg trackers. (And those were in turn 'stolen' from the ogsi ones or other places ....) -- Andreas Savva Fujitsu Laboratories Ltd
Andreas, I like this expanding of tracker status. Do we want to add something in so that we can indicate that we have fixed things in the spec and the xsd schema? or should we make fixed mean both? steve.. Andreas Savva wrote:
This is a procedural proposal about the specification tracker settings:
At the moment the tracker artifact status are the gridforge default: open, pending, closed.
These cannot be changed but new values can be defined. I propose to augment them with the following values: resolved, fixed, deferred.
The meaning of these values would be as follows:
Open: the issue has been proposed by a member but not yet accepted by the WG.
Pending: the issue has been accepted and is still pending resolution by the WG
Resolved: The WG has decided and accepted a resolution, but the actions are still pending
Fixed: The editor has completed the proposed actions, but the actions are awaiting verification.
Closed: The issue has been resolved and is reflected in the work products of the WG. The completion of the changes must be reported by the primary editor and verified by the secondary editor (or other WG member).
Deferred: The WG has decided that the issue has some merit but that it should not be addressed in the upcoming revision of the spec.
And deferred items would later be moved to the post-v1 tracker.
Note that all this is not my invention. I am 'stealing' it from the ogsa-wg trackers. (And those were in turn 'stolen' from the ogsi ones or other places ....)
-- -- ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Dr A. Stephen McGough http://www.doc.ic.ac.uk/~asm ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Technical Coordinator, London e-Science Centre, Imperial College London, Department of Computing, 180 Queen's Gate, London SW7 2BZ, UK tel: +44 (0)207-594-8409 fax: +44 (0)207-581-8024 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Assistant Warden, West Wing, Beit Hall, Imperial College, Prince Consort Road, London, SW7 2BB tel: +44 (0)207-594-9910 ------------------------------------------------------------------------
Hi all, I worked a bit on the originally proposed tracker status values and the comments to them. I also tried to avoid "sensitive" terms like "Open" and "Pending", but I did not come up with a nice replacement for "Closed", so I still left it in. The result is a set of status values and transitional actions. Each transitional action has exactly one preconditioning status value and results in exactly one status value. Status values ============= "New" An issue has been added to the tracker system. The WG has not yet decided to accept this issue. No person or group has been assigned yet to work on this issue. "Assigned" A person or group of persons has been assigned to work in this issue. In case of a group, the responsible person is tagged in the tracker system. The assignment is to come up with a proposal on this issue. "Resolved" A solution to the issue is available and awaits acceptance from the WG. "Fixed" The proposed solution has been accepted and needs to be merged into the appropriate/affected resource(s). "Closed" The merged solution is taken over into the main official published resource. The final completion must be reported by the main editor and reviewed by at least one other member (preferably the second editor). "Rejected" The issue has been rejected and will not be considered again in the future. "Deferred" The issue has been acknowledged and will be addressed in future releases. Transitional Actions ==================== Pre status: New Post status: Assigned The WG accepts an issue and assigns a responsible person to work on this issue. Pre status: New Post status: Rejected The WG rejects this issue due to various reasons and decides that it will not be reconsidered again. Pre status: Assigned Post status: Resolved The assigned person or group finds a solution for this issue and files it for acceptance. Pre status: Resolved Post status: Fixed The proposed solution has been accepted by the WG. Pre status: Resolved Post status: Assigned The WG decides that the proposed solution does not fit and requires an alternative solution. A new responsible person or group may assigned. Pre status: Resolved Post status: Deferred The WG eventually decides that at the moment there is no suitable solution to the issue or the issue bounced back and forth between the states "Assigned" and "Resolved" for too many times. At a later stage, there may be a solution to the issue. Pre status: Resolved Post status: Rejected The WG realises that this issue is completely off track from the scope and rejects it. Pre status: Fixed Post status: Closed The solution to the issue has been merged and is reviewed. --- I hope I didn't forget anything. The actual picture of this is not as complicated ass the whole bunch of text may suppose. Cheers, Michel N.B..: Have a nice weekend!
Michel, Gridforge status values "Open", "Pending" and "Closed" cannot be removed from the Status value list. We have to live with them. I think it would cause more confusion not to use them and try to define 'similar' ones like New and Assigned instead. I'm not sure if it makes any difference on the 'sensitivity' issue but my plan is to also add a short 'glossary' of the meaning of the status values at the top of the tracker page. See this tracker for an example: https://forge.gridforum.org/tracker/index.php?func=browse&group_id=42&atid=780 Also I can sympathize with the desire to add a 'Reject', but in practice we have re-visited such issues (again and again) and I think 'Closed' with an appropriate comment would be good enough. I might have mentioned in the initial email that we could also do away with 'Deferred' since we have a post-v1 tracker and the deferred issues could simply be moved there instead. Obviously fewer rather than more values are better as long as they capture the stages we go through in resolving issues. (And I had thought when I sent the initial proposal that I would get no responses....) Andreas Michel Drescher wrote:
Hi all,
I worked a bit on the originally proposed tracker status values and the comments to them.
I also tried to avoid "sensitive" terms like "Open" and "Pending", but I did not come up with a nice replacement for "Closed", so I still left it in.
The result is a set of status values and transitional actions. Each transitional action has exactly one preconditioning status value and results in exactly one status value.
Status values =============
"New" An issue has been added to the tracker system. The WG has not yet decided to accept this issue. No person or group has been assigned yet to work on this issue.
"Assigned" A person or group of persons has been assigned to work in this issue. In case of a group, the responsible person is tagged in the tracker system. The assignment is to come up with a proposal on this issue.
"Resolved" A solution to the issue is available and awaits acceptance from the WG.
"Fixed" The proposed solution has been accepted and needs to be merged into the appropriate/affected resource(s).
"Closed" The merged solution is taken over into the main official published resource. The final completion must be reported by the main editor and reviewed by at least one other member (preferably the second editor).
"Rejected" The issue has been rejected and will not be considered again in the future.
"Deferred" The issue has been acknowledged and will be addressed in future releases.
Transitional Actions ====================
Pre status: New Post status: Assigned The WG accepts an issue and assigns a responsible person to work on this issue.
Pre status: New Post status: Rejected The WG rejects this issue due to various reasons and decides that it will not be reconsidered again.
Pre status: Assigned Post status: Resolved The assigned person or group finds a solution for this issue and files it for acceptance.
Pre status: Resolved Post status: Fixed The proposed solution has been accepted by the WG.
Pre status: Resolved Post status: Assigned The WG decides that the proposed solution does not fit and requires an alternative solution. A new responsible person or group may assigned.
Pre status: Resolved Post status: Deferred The WG eventually decides that at the moment there is no suitable solution to the issue or the issue bounced back and forth between the states "Assigned" and "Resolved" for too many times. At a later stage, there may be a solution to the issue.
Pre status: Resolved Post status: Rejected The WG realises that this issue is completely off track from the scope and rejects it.
Pre status: Fixed Post status: Closed The solution to the issue has been merged and is reviewed.
---
I hope I didn't forget anything. The actual picture of this is not as complicated ass the whole bunch of text may suppose.
Cheers, Michel
N.B..: Have a nice weekend!
Hi Steve, Andrew Stephen McGough wrote:
Andreas,
I like this expanding of tracker status. Do we want to add something in so that we can indicate that we have fixed things in the spec and the xsd schema? or should we make fixed mean both?
I think Fixed should mean that both the schema and the spec are updated. We can synchronize the spec and schema updates by adding comments to the tracker and move the status to Fixed when both are done. Andreas
Works for me. steve.. Andreas Savva wrote:
Hi Steve,
Andrew Stephen McGough wrote:
Andreas,
I like this expanding of tracker status. Do we want to add something in so that we can indicate that we have fixed things in the spec and the xsd schema? or should we make fixed mean both?
I think Fixed should mean that both the schema and the spec are updated. We can synchronize the spec and schema updates by adding comments to the tracker and move the status to Fixed when both are done.
Andreas
-- ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Dr A. Stephen McGough ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Research Associate, Imperial College London, Department of Computing, 180 Queen's Gate, London SW7 2BZ, UK tel: +44 (0)207-594-8310 fax: +44 (0)207-581-8024 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Assistant Warden, West Wing, Beit Hall, Imperial College, Prince Consort Road, London, SW7 2BB tel: +44 (0)207-828-49910 ------------------------------------------------------------------------
Andreas Savva wrote:
This is a procedural proposal about the specification tracker settings: [...] The meaning of these values would be as follows: Pending: the issue has been accepted and is still pending resolution by the WG
Actually, this has a pre-defined meaning in the GridForge software. That meaning is that "response from the artifact author is due" and IIRC, this item automatically migrates to Closed if no response is received within a certain amount of time. Indeed, both Open and Closed also have pre-defined meanings. It seems to me like you are trying to sub-class these states (which is not a bad thing as such, but say what you mean.)
Resolved: The WG has decided and accepted a resolution, but the actions are still pending
Fixed: The editor has completed the proposed actions, but the actions are awaiting verification.
Closed: The issue has been resolved and is reflected in the work products of the WG. The completion of the changes must be reported by the primary editor and verified by the secondary editor (or other WG member).
It's not clear to me why you have these two with these meanings. It seems that in practice, tracker items don't get fixed or closed for ages, even when the issues themselves have been long resolved. :^)
Deferred: The WG has decided that the issue has some merit but that it should not be addressed in the upcoming revision of the spec.
Could also do with "Rejected", with the meaning of "We are never going to do this". An example might be a suggestion that JSDL specifies job instance state, which I remember as being something that moved out of scope very rapidly early in the group's lifetime. :^) Donal.
On 8 Apr 2005, at 11:10, Donal K. Fellows wrote:
Andreas Savva wrote:
[...] Resolved: The WG has decided and accepted a resolution, but the actions are still pending Fixed: The editor has completed the proposed actions, but the actions are awaiting verification. Closed: The issue has been resolved and is reflected in the work products of the WG. The completion of the changes must be reported by the primary editor and verified by the secondary editor (or other WG member).
It's not clear to me why you have these two with these meanings. It seems that in practice, tracker items don't get fixed or closed for ages, even when the issues themselves have been long resolved. :^)
THis is a matter of actually exploiting the possibilities Gridforge offers to manage the project, isn't it? So, somebody has to follow-up these trackers regularly, and they have to be on the agenda of the phone conferences. In fact, using this proposal turns the phone conferences into a more formal "theater play" - which might benefit our productivity, I suppose. :^)
Deferred: The WG has decided that the issue has some merit but that it should not be addressed in the upcoming revision of the spec.
Could also do with "Rejected", with the meaning of "We are never going to do this". An example might be a suggestion that JSDL specifies job instance state, which I remember as being something that moved out of scope very rapidly early in the group's lifetime. :^)
I think "deferred" and "rejected" both have their "right to live" since they have - to me - different meanings just as you wrote. So why not have both? Cheers, Michel
Donal, Donal K. Fellows wrote:
Andreas Savva wrote:
This is a procedural proposal about the specification tracker settings:
[...]
The meaning of these values would be as follows: Pending: the issue has been accepted and is still pending resolution by the WG
Actually, this has a pre-defined meaning in the GridForge software. That meaning is that "response from the artifact author is due" and IIRC, this item automatically migrates to Closed if no response is received within a certain amount of time.
Automatically closing the tracker is the default setting in the tracker creation form but it is configurable. And I always change these settings (they are evil) so that gridforge does not automatically close artifacts. It is not particularly useful in our situation. I don't see the problem with defining pending to be 'issue accepted but no resolution' since it is similar in meaning to what you write above and more applicable to our situation.
Indeed, both Open and Closed also have pre-defined meanings. It seems to me like you are trying to sub-class these states (which is not a bad thing as such, but say what you mean.)
Not exactly. Gridforge is especially confusing here. Let me explain: Gridforge trackers have predefined Status *values* "Open" "Pending" and "Closed". These values can then be one of two *classes*: open or closed. The default settings have values "Open" and "Pending" to be of class open; "Closed" to be of class closed. My proposal is about adding status values and not classes. Existing assignments remain the same. Then "Resolved" and "Fixed" would be of class open and "Deferred" of class closed. Andreas
Andreas Savva wrote:
Automatically closing the tracker is the default setting in the tracker creation form but it is configurable. And I always change these settings (they are evil) so that gridforge does not automatically close artifacts. It is not particularly useful in our situation.
While I'd agree with that, I have to admit that I really don't like changing the meaning of any predefined terms even locally. It makes it very hard for people to transfer knowledge from one part of the system to another. (Auto-closing tracker items is useful when you have many poor-quality tracker items submitted, such as happens with many software bug report DBs; we don't have that problem.) I've no real problem with the states themselves (I'd love to see a state diagram of course, but that's just because I like state diagrams. :^) [Thanks for the explanation. It helped a lot.] Donal.
Donal, [Sorry if this appears twice. I'm having connection problems.] Donal K. Fellows wrote:
Andreas Savva wrote:
Automatically closing the tracker is the default setting in the tracker creation form but it is configurable. And I always change these settings (they are evil) so that gridforge does not automatically close artifacts. It is not particularly useful in our situation.
While I'd agree with that, I have to admit that I really don't like changing the meaning of any predefined terms even locally. It makes it very hard for people to transfer knowledge from one part of the system to another. (Auto-closing tracker items is useful when you have many poor-quality tracker items submitted, such as happens with many software bug report DBs; we don't have that problem.)
I don't think we are really changing completely the meaning of the 'Pending' state; refining it, yes. It is a pity that GGF didn't set up the default tracker creation with a more useful set of state values. Perhaps something can be done in the future, but that shouldn't stop up from improving its usability now. The alternative is do nothing. Or define other values and ignore the Pending value but I would find it more confusing to have a value that has no meaning in the status value list.
I've no real problem with the states themselves (I'd love to see a state diagram of course, but that's just because I like state diagrams. :^)
[Thanks for the explanation. It helped a lot.]
Good to hear. (Michel did seem to hint about a state diagram in his last email.)
I second that. Cheers, Michel On 8 Apr 2005, at 10:48, Andreas Savva wrote:
This is a procedural proposal about the specification tracker settings:
At the moment the tracker artifact status are the gridforge default: open, pending, closed.
These cannot be changed but new values can be defined. I propose to augment them with the following values: resolved, fixed, deferred.
The meaning of these values would be as follows:
Open: the issue has been proposed by a member but not yet accepted by the WG.
Pending: the issue has been accepted and is still pending resolution by the WG
Resolved: The WG has decided and accepted a resolution, but the actions are still pending
Fixed: The editor has completed the proposed actions, but the actions are awaiting verification.
Closed: The issue has been resolved and is reflected in the work products of the WG. The completion of the changes must be reported by the primary editor and verified by the secondary editor (or other WG member).
Deferred: The WG has decided that the issue has some merit but that it should not be addressed in the upcoming revision of the spec.
And deferred items would later be moved to the post-v1 tracker.
Note that all this is not my invention. I am 'stealing' it from the ogsa-wg trackers. (And those were in turn 'stolen' from the ogsi ones or other places ....)
-- Andreas Savva Fujitsu Laboratories Ltd
I like this I think this is a good idea. Darren
This is a procedural proposal about the specification tracker settings:
At the moment the tracker artifact status are the gridforge default: open, pending, closed.
These cannot be changed but new values can be defined. I propose to augment them with the following values: resolved, fixed, deferred.
The meaning of these values would be as follows:
Open: the issue has been proposed by a member but not yet accepted by the WG.
Pending: the issue has been accepted and is still pending resolution by the WG
Resolved: The WG has decided and accepted a resolution, but the actions are still pending
Fixed: The editor has completed the proposed actions, but the actions are awaiting verification.
Closed: The issue has been resolved and is reflected in the work products of the WG. The completion of the changes must be reported by the primary editor and verified by the secondary editor (or other WG member).
Deferred: The WG has decided that the issue has some merit but that it should not be addressed in the upcoming revision of the spec.
And deferred items would later be moved to the post-v1 tracker.
Note that all this is not my invention. I am 'stealing' it from the ogsa-wg trackers. (And those were in turn 'stolen' from the ogsi ones or other places ....)
-- Andreas Savva Fujitsu Laboratories Ltd
participants (6)
-
A S McGough -
Andreas Savva -
Andrew Stephen McGough
-
darren＠pulsipher.org -
Donal K. Fellows -
Michel Drescher