Pros & Cons of ASSIGNED pointer and NEEDINFO

[Warren Togami]

It seems that bouncing of the ASSIGNED pointer is a polarizing issue. 
Some people like it, some people hate it.  NEEDINFO is a little less 
polarizing, although some people hate to bounce too.

"ASSIGNED to next actor"
========================
PRO:
http://rubenkerkhof.com/review
This total view of the review status is VERY CLEAR on who needs to act 
nex.  This VERY CLEAR nature is partially lost if we move back to 
ASSIGNED pointer to only reviewer.

CON:
User interface is not obvious, thus people forget to do it.  This 
creates inconsistent states and extra bugmail as it is corrected 
after-the-fact.

"ASSIGNED to reviewer, use NEEDINFO as necessary"
=================================================
PRO:
User interface is less error prone.

CON:
Unclear that the owner must act in order to finish a ticket, in the 
common state where neither ASSIGNED nor NEEDINFO is set to the owner 
when a package needs fixes or a package is done.
(I personally think this is a huge detriment.)

Frontpage.cgi
=============
ASSIGNED or NEEDINFO shows up on frontpage.cgi, making either equally 
fine for personal work-queue viewing.

Decision Making...
==================
We can't make everyone happy.  The best we can do is compromise within 
the limits of our current Bugzilla-based review process and settle on a 
process that sucks less for the short-term.  Then focus on building the 
ideal process using better tools... perhaps within the Package Database 
schema, application, and other tools that interface with it.

Ultimately, I believe "ASSIGNED to next actor" is logical and good, and 
only the error-prone nature of our current user interface is holding us 
back from using it smoothly.  Could we easily improve this user interface?

User Interface Improvement
==========================
- fedora-review? set ASSIGNED pointer to self (reviewer takes).
- fedora-review- set ASSIGNED pointer to owner.
- fedora-review+ set ASSIGNED pointer to owner.

Might this work to make "ASSIGNED to next actor" a smooth process?  Only 
problem... who is the owner?  Not so easy to automate in Bugzilla.

Any ideas?

Warren Togami
wtogami at redhat.com