In our old defect tracking system, pretty much anybody could assign any trouble ticket to anybody. I do not think this was a property of the bug tracking software we were using. It was most likely due to the way the system was configured. This flexibility was actually nice to have. If I went to another team lead, and they told me that somebody on their team could take over a trouble ticket, I could just assign the ticket to that team member.
The current defect tracking system we use is more formal. Only team leads and managers can assign trouble tickets. This has some benefits in that there is some control to the madness. But it has its drawbacks. When my team lead is out sick, I have to hunt down somebody who has the access to assign tickets. This is a waste of time that leads to inefficiency. I imagine we could change the rules in our system to give us more freedom.
I wonder what the norm is. Perhaps on smaller projects, things are not on lock down. The funny thing is that our project is winding down and we do not have that many folks left. This is one of the reasons I had to get the authority to assign tickets. Our team leader left the company, and somebody had to take over.
