BA 45/52: Does it block ship?
A framework based on how Apple converges and decides on release blocker issues.
There are two moments where the impact of decisions in software development are critical: the middle and the end.
The middle still has enough room to adjust plans, course direction, many options.
The end requires ruthless pragmatism and focus.
If there was ever a moment where Apple engineering team shined, it was during the end game, convergence.
When you are swimming in a sea of ship blockers, where everything looks critical, how do you tell what’s an actual ship blocker?
TPM and PM can help engineering teams develop frameworks, checklist, or flowcharts to help them determine if the bug should be considered block ship.
Here's a framework template that you can use, based on how Apple approached convergence and release blockers, to help you figure out which bug is truly going to block ship:
Additional Notes:
Can the user self recover or recovery path available? — Quitting the app, exit and re-enter the user flow, restarting the device, are just some options to consider as “recovery path”.
Data Loss/Crashes — regardless of the reproducibility of the issue or whether the issue is in the primary user flows, data loss and crashes at Apple or anywhere should be considered an immediate Block Ship.
Does this make an unusable user experience? — this one can be subjective. At Apple pixel or UI element misaligned here and there was acceptable to be fixed in next release. However, if it prevented you from achieving your desired outcome or action, then we consider it Block Ship.
Reproducibility rate — another subjective and something entirely dependent on your appetite. We shipped bugs that had 20% reproducibility rates and often times higher than that.
At the end of the day, if you have to keep it simple, here is my advise:
Be pragmatic
Focus on the data loss and crashes
Don’t ship anything that will not allow a user to complete a critical action especially those that are chained actions.
Take the above as a starter and go crazy with adding mathematical formulas to how you calculate impact, reproducibility, whatever. You got this.
Until next time 👋!
-Aadil
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