BrDR Service Request Management

August 20, 2021

While AASHTOWare BrDR has long provided support services to its users, a recent re-evaluation and redesign of the process has been undertaken to provide better transparency throughout the review process for all users. Led by Task Force member Mark Bucci, the focus of the redesign includes an increased awareness of the categorization of service requests and the process for managing these requests based on the overall short term/long term benefits and the impact the request will have.

For the purposes of monitoring user requests, the following definitions have been established and have been in place for some time:

To facilitate and oversee the BrDR Service Request Management process, a Backlog TAG will be established to monitor the process. The responsibilities of the TAG will include:

  • Escalated Issue Review – This is a review of issues that have been escalated based on the engineering approach (interpretation of the code or different engineering approach) and issue type assignment (disagreement on the issue type assignment).
  • Bug Evaluation – Evaluate whether a bug is Urgent, Critical, High Priority, or Low Priority.
  • Maintenance and Enhancement – Evaluate and categorize issues to determine if they are High Impact or Low impact.

To guide the TAG involvement and to establish the benefit/impact and then short versus long-term nature of the requests, an Issue Evaluation Process has been developed to help categorize requests.

  • Quadrant 1 – Issues will be fixed as soon as possible under the software maintenance contract.
  • Quadrant 2 – Bugs will be fixed in upcoming release other items will be evaluated to identify potential implementation issues, identify related issues, establish a rough estimate, and prioritized based on User Group voting or through Task Force directed work.
  • Quadrants 3 & 4 – Option will be provided for state funded service unit work or volunteer to champion effort to increase interest with other states. Otherwise, user will be notified that issue will not be incorporated and will be closed.

The figure below illustrates the anticipated workflow of the Service Request Management Process:

Through this process and oversight, the BrDR Task Force will work to provide timely action on service requests that best serve the BrDR user group community as a whole, while providing a mechanism for agencies to improve the software for their individual needs.