Our last defect tracking system was very flexible. You might say it was too flexible. Anybody was allowed to assign a trouble ticket to anybody else. This can in handy often. For example, if I met another team lead, and we both decided a ticket should be transferred to a member of their team, I could just assign the trouble ticket directly to the individual. Now I do not think this flexibility was a property of the bug tracking software we used. I suspect it was due to the way the software was configured by us.
The current defect tracking system we use is more restricted. Only those with team lead authority can assign trouble tickets. This causes pain sometimes. Suppose my team lead is out sick today. Then I need to hunt down somebody with the access if I want a trouble ticket assigned. This is true even if I need the ticket assigned to myself. The result is that the system is often inefficient. And that results in less trouble ticket resolution productivity. Plus it gets developers frustrated.
I wonder how other systems are set up. Perhaps it depends on the size of the project. I imagine that a small team does not need as many restrictions as a larger one. The funny thing is that our project is actually winding down. So we do not have a lot of developers left. But we still have trouble ticket assignment on lock down. It might be time to change the rules in our system. For now I have gained the ability to assign trouble tickets myself. This is because our team lead quit, and I got drafted to take over his duties.
