On the Canvas Engineering Backend: Removing the Shelved Status

[erinhmcmillan]

When our customers file support cases that get triaged as bug tickets, some are fixed while others are “shelved”, hoping engineering can get to them later. We’re refining our processes to make clear decisions more quickly and keep you informed about the status of your bug reports.

Let’s start at the beginning.

What is a bug?

A bug is behavior that contradicts intended functionality in Canvas. But we realize that defining a bug isn’t always that simple.

Customer reported issues can represent genuine frustration for teachers, learners and other users. These issues may or may not be bugs. They could be feature requests—requests for new or improved functionality that does not yet exist—gaps in documentation, or simply differing opinions of how things “should” work.

Because of the customer validation that takes place during the feature development process, teams can differentiate quickly whether a reported issue is a bug.

How are issues triaged?

As our teams analyze incoming issues that are to be resolved as a bug, they consider the severity of the behavior, the number of users affected, the technical and product implications of fixing it, and overall team capacity.

Because our teams already know how a feature is designed to work, most triaged issues should be immediately actionable. However, some reported issues need some extra consideration to deliver a great user experience.

What is a shelved status?

Although we would like to fix every bug, the large software ecosystem that is Canvas can’t possibly resolve every concern. Originally, Engineering created the Shelved status, which allowed them to “shelve” bugs and pick them back up at a later time—assuming the scope and severity didn’t warrant immediate prioritization. However, history has shown us that in the entire existence of the Shelved status, only 8% of shelved bugs were fixed. 

Since “Shelved” is an internal status, you don’t have any transparency as to when these bugs may be addressed. And as our customers, you were not aware that these tickets had been shelved at all—you thought they would still be resolved at some point although we did not provide any updates. 

What is changing?

We are taking a fresh look at our processes and improving the expectations you have for us regarding bug reports.

Our Engineering teams are removing the Shelved status as an option for triaging tickets they receive from our Support Team. After receiving and reviewing a ticket, they are going to make the tough decisions regarding which issues will be resolved as bugs and which will not. Making clear decisions more quickly improves our communication with you.

Moving forward, you will receive faster communication regarding issues that are escalated to our engineering teams. 

• A ticket triaged to Open will be corrected as a bug and added to the Known Issues board. For details about the Open status, see the blog post we published previously regarding fixed bugs and our Known Issues process.
• A ticket triaged to Closed will not be fixed, the status of which will be communicated via an update in all associated support cases. (However, please note that a Closed status can also refer to tickets that have been completed and are awaiting deployment to the beta and production environments—such situations will be indicated via the support case message.)
  
  

Existing Shelved Tickets

Engineering tickets that are currently shelved will be reviewed again by each team and triaged appropriately as opened or closed.

If you receive an update indicating a case you submitted was previously shelved and has been closed, never fear. The behavior noted in the ticket may no longer apply in Canvas because of more recent updates within the platform. However, if you’re still experiencing the behavior you noted in the case, please resubmit a case to our Canvas Support Team and they’d be happy to re-review and see if the behavior needs to be reconsidered with our engineering teams.

We know these process changes will help us fix more bugs for you over time. Thanks for helping us improve the Canvas platform!