We called it RAID because it kills bugs dead
devblogs.microsoft.com
We called it RAID because it kills bugs dead
1–10 of 128 posts
Re: We called it RAID because it kills bugs dead
#2I left MSFT and went to Viair (with folks from the MSN Mobile and Outlook Express team), and we didn't have a bug tracking system... so we had someone send us a few screenshots of RAID and built a VisualJ clone one weekend. Fun side project, didn't really want to be in the business of bug tracking, was slightly before the web app era... We called our bug tracking system "BlackFlag" because it was a competing brand of bug spray. (And obviously we used the logo from the punk band...)
Re: We called it RAID because it kills bugs dead
#3Oh lord, product studio. Back in 2013 the preferred method of filing workitems for a given "wave" was to load this spreadsheet, do weiiird formatting, and indentation, type up all the workitems you foresee for the next sprint and then press a magic "send to product studio" button." God help you if you messed up some of the nesting or wanted to reorder anything - honestly I would just wipe it clean and start from scratch.
Ironically my team just finished a product called RAID that was designed to kill bugs in product studio and move them to DevOps. There are still pockets of teams that use Product Studio within Microsoft - the sufficiency gap is real - but they're the overwhelming minority now.
Re: We called it RAID because it kills bugs dead
#4I left MSFT and went to Viair (with folks from the MSN Mobile and Outlook Express team), and we didn't have a bug tracking system... so we had someone send us a few screenshots of RAID and built a VisualJ clone one weekend. Fun side project, didn't really want to be in the business of bug tracking, was slightly before the web app era... We called our bug tracking system "BlackFlag" because it was a competing brand of…
I feel like I'm watching an episode of Halt and Catch Fire. Thanks for sharing!
Re: We called it RAID because it kills bugs dead
#5Oh lord, product studio. Back in 2013 the preferred method of filing workitems for a given "wave" was to load this spreadsheet, do weiiird formatting, and indentation, type up all the workitems you foresee for the next sprint and then press a magic "send to product studio" button." God help you if you messed up some of the nesting or wanted to reorder anything - honestly I would just wipe it clean and start from scra…
Sounds like the product could have been named FLIT, given the finicky nature.
Re: We called it RAID because it kills bugs dead
#6>>> they might have been too scared to write it. When looking back on the origin of RAID, one of the original developers confessed, “It really wasn’t made to last that long. Sorry!”
This speaks to me - too many times we think we need clever architecture and well thought out methodologies and ... the most useful tools are a mix of inspiration and timing and luck.
Had the developers stopped to plan they would have built something with over 16 bits of primary key - and also made a hundred other "improvements" that would have destroyed all the value MS got out of it.
There is a point in this - it I am not sure I know what it is.
Re: We called it RAID because it kills bugs dead
#7I'll take any opportunity to mention John Browne's "The Bug Count Also Rises"[1], which contains the line "The RAID is huge with bugs", referring to Microsoft's bug tracker. It was previously submitted to HN[2].
[1]: http://www.workpump.com/bugcount/bugcount.html [2]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2740452
Re: We called it RAID because it kills bugs dead
#8And if you have disks in RAID a bug in it kills your data instead. ;-)
Re: We called it RAID because it kills bugs dead
#9Fun fact: Apple's internal bug tracking tool, Radar, traces its origins to a pen-and-paper tracking system from the very early days.
In a similar fashion to RAID from the article, it's use expanded way beyond the original use case and is now used by nearly every team at Apple, from hardware, to test, to marketing, retail, and everything in between.
It's often the butt of a lot of jokes as most people hate its dated and confusing UI :).
edit: Though to be fair, the team maintaining it has made massive strides recently to completely revamp the UX which is no small feat given such a wide range of business critical use cases.
Re: We called it RAID because it kills bugs dead
#10Fun fact: Apple's internal bug tracking tool, Radar, traces its origins to a pen-and-paper tracking system from the very early days. In a similar fashion to RAID from the article, it's use expanded way beyond the original use case and is now used by nearly every team at Apple, from hardware, to test, to marketing, retail, and everything in between. It's often the butt of a lot of jokes as most people hate its dated a…
As far as I can tell, most teams think Radar is the best bug tracking tool ever. Externally, it's extremely frustrating to interact with, even more so through Feedback Assistant.