Aglet

How to prioritize intermittent errors by workflow harm

Prioritizing intermittent errors requires judging harm even when the failure rate is uneven. Consider the action blocked, routes and request shapes affected, whether a retry succeeds, whether data may be partially changed, and whether a recent release widened the pattern.

Decide where the work belongs

  1. Rank the failed user action

    Name the action that fails and distinguish a harmless refresh from a rejected save, assignment, or verification. Record whether the interface explains the outcome and whether people retry manually. A failure that leaves state uncertain or encourages duplicate submission deserves higher priority.

  2. Group reach and outcome variation

    Compare failure groups by route, input, account size, device, release, time window, status, and retry result. Separate confirmed reach from sparse observations. A common recoverable error and a rare data-affecting error may need different owners and urgency even when counts are similar.

  3. Choose a bounded queue decision

    Select immediate investigation, a targeted error-handling improvement, or collection of one missing comparison. State what evidence changes priority, such as a failing request class with no safe retry or a release boundary. Keep broad reliability cleanup separate from the smallest affected workflow.

What to carry forward

Produce a queue decision tied to blocked work, confirmed reach, retry behavior, and data uncertainty. Include whether the pattern is new, growing, or unresolved. The item is ready when another engineer has a representative failure and understands why its harm outranks other intermittent symptoms.

Keep the decision with the work.

Use a Work Item in Aglet to record the problem, the evidence you have, and the next decision. Add an owner and priority, then keep updates in the discussion so the next person can follow the reasoning.

Create an account See the product workflow