Software Endgames: Eliminating Defects, Controlling Change, and the Countdown to On-Time Delivery

Chapter Ten: Work Queues and Packaging

This chapter focuses on managing defect repairs within the endgame and packaging them effectively for testing. While the typical endgame may not seem to be the best place for fine-granular work management or planning, I’ve found that these techniques are critical for endgame management.

First, I explore work queues, a method I’ve used quite effectively to load-balance repairs across software development teams. The concept is simple. You develop a view to what each engineer can do from a rework perspective, defining how many and what types of repairs each can make. Then, as defects arrive, you load-balance the incoming defects over your development team based on these rules. Repair efficiency is derived by ...