Can Roundup do this...

[Donald 'Paddy' McCarthy]

For Hardware design we jave a very high cost associated with releasing a 
design for manufacturing (around $1M), so one of the things we do is 
simulate like crazy, and graph bugs found and bugs fixed versus time. By 
looking at the graph we gain more information on the health of our design.

I am looking at tools to more automate the bug tracking process that are 
'lightweight' ie easy to administer but that also help with the graph 
creation process.

After looking at a lot of tools, my python bias kicked in - almost al 
the tools I looked at did not have graphing functionality. I also 
couldn't find it in Roundup but, Since I can create the graphs from a 
spreadsheet, I need to know if Roundup can create say csv files of any 
or all fields (bug ID, time bug entered, current state of bug, time bug 
reached that state, as well as others).

I could then set up a flow where we could dump the data and create our 
graphs on a weekly basis all in less than 20 minutes (hopefully).

If you ask why if were paying so much to make a chip we haven't got the 
reporting sown up then, we do have reporting system(s) but in our large 
company these systems are installed and geared to report on different 
aspects of the product lifecycle. We want to track from a much earlier 
point in the life cycle, for a single project team at a single site, and 
in a more 'agile' way. We don't want too much external burocracy 
involved in deciding what is reported and to whome. We are given local 
targets and this is to help us achieve them, for the benefit of the 
company as a whole, but 'it's a local thing', the price I pay for that 
control is that we have to impliment and show its benefits whilst doing 
our normal jobs.

(OK, OK the real reason is that were a perl house! Can you believe it, 
I'd like to show them something working then when management are 
praising the results, have its implimentation details slip out.
<RANT smiley="TRUE">
Can you believe it. They are giving in-house courses in Object Oriented 
perl at our main site! Ive had to build on the perl they produce at the 
moment - a tough job, and now they want to create OO perl?!
I'm going to have to re-think my approach to sneaking python in to the 
company
</RANT>

Cheers,  Paddy.