Let your bugs have social networks

One of the things I really like about JIRA is how much linking it allows. (Other tools do this too, but I wanted to namedrop the tool because they do it particularly well.) From a story, I can link related stories, defects, CM tickets, deployment tickets, etc.... Basically whatever ticket type I want. This is great, because over time I've developed some risk heuristics based on the number of links a ticket has:

• If it has a lot of links to other stories, I likely need to test more around business functionality concerns.


• If it has a lot of links to other bugs, I likely need to test more around technical functionality concerns.


• If it has a lot of links to CM tickets, I likely need to test more around deployment and configuration.

I've also developed some similar heuristics around estimating how long work will take based on links, how much documentation there will be to review, etc...

JIRA also shows you how many people have participated in a ticket. That is, it tracks who's "touched" it. I have similar heuristics around that. The more people involved, the longer stuff will take, the more likely there was code integration, etc...

What does the social network of your tickets tell you about your testing?