Work Item naming conventions

Question

What naming conventions do you use when creating work items in your task/bug tracking tools?

For example:

• Do you prefix the items with an area/subject?
• How do you begin scenarios/use cases? E.g., "The department manager can..."
• How do you make it easier to detect duplicates?

Answer 1

Your project management, bug tracking and time management (if different from the pm tool) should follow the same pattern, no matter what the pattern is. I usually like to do a top down approach: project-application-page (for example: Amazon-Order Entry-Confirmation Page) - if the project/task management, bug and time management all follow the same pattern then you can track tasks to open issues to time spent easily. After the page you enter a short descriptive text of the issue. In the description area, you need to state:

• environment (OS/browser)
• version being tested
• server environment (dev, QA, or production)
• the bug (screen captures help greatly)
• the expected results (what you expected to happen)
• level of issue (show stopper to nice-to-have-but-will-never-get-done)