What do the rating values mean?
For every bug or suggestion submitted in the PFC, you are required to vote. How do you decide if an issue is a 1 or a 5? Does a 3 rating for a suggestion mean the same thing as a 3 for a bug? Here's the concensus internally on what the ratings should indicate:
Rating |
Bugs |
|
Rating |
Suggestions |
1 |
This is a trivial or cosmetic bug and it doesn’t keep me from using the product or my application. |
|
1 |
Implementing this suggestion would negatively impact the product and my experience. Please do not implement it. |
2 |
This is a bug is a minor annoyance that doesn’t cause serious problems. |
|
2 |
I’m neutral, implementing this feature would not improve the product nor benefit me in anyway but it wouldn’t affect me negatively either. |
3 |
This bug affects functionality but there’s an acceptable workaround. |
|
3 |
This is a good idea, this feature would moderately improve my experience. |
4 |
This bug has a significant impact on using the product or my application. |
|
4 |
Adding this feature would provide a significant positive impact on the product, my productivity, or my application. |
5 |
This bug is blocking me from using the product or preventing my application from working as I need it to. It should absolutely be fixed. |
|
5 |
This is a must-have feature and Microsoft should absolutely implement it soon. Without this feature I am blocked in key use scenarios. |
Many customers have suggested that we adjust the rating system to be -1 to 4 as opposed to 1 to 5. I think this is not necessary if we define the each rating value as we've done above (in fact we could use A, B, C, D, E as the rating scale if we all agree on what each value means).
So as a PFC user, is this how do you decide how to vote on an issue. Is it close to what you see above?
Marie Hagman
Program Manager
Visual Studio