I've decided to triage my wardrobe! "Huh?" I hear you saying.

America is big. Things in America are big. Cars are big. Houses are big. Parking spaces are big. Burgers are big. Fries are bigger. And most of all spaces for hanging clothes are big. In fact, even in relatively densely populated coastal cities like Seattle walk-inn closets tend to big enough for a dad to swing a small child. The problem with this is that it is easy to keep shelving more and more clothes and never throw any out.

It's also really easy with approaching middle-age and fast growing children to let years go by and forget about wardrobe updates. Then one morning comes when you look in the mirror and realize you are dressed in clothes that pre-date your marriage. So, I've decided to triage my wardrobe.

When I was on my Asian tour recently I was surprised how often I had to explain the triage process for software projects. Typically, triage is held to process and prioritize bugs reported in system testing. However, with MSF we suggested that triage is a good process for sorting working queuing for development. In Team Foundation Server, MSF CMMI process template, there is a triage report that shows all the work item types such as requirement, change request, bug, issue, and risk queuing for prioritization. It seems that the meaning of triage is not widely understood. So, I thought I'd use my personal fashion disaster I call a wardrobe as way to explain it.

Triage is a process borrowed from medicine - initially, field emergency medicine. Triage is the process used to sort patients in an ER(A&E) room. The triage nurse examines the patient and decides whether they need: immediate attention; need attention but can wait until later; do not need attention (in a war time field hospital situation this usually means that they are beyond help.)

In software triage we seek to sort things in to three buckets too: things that need to be dealt with in the current iteration; things that can be postponed to a future iteration; and things that will not be dealt with (i.e. not fixed, not selected, rejected and so forth.)

In order to make the selection we need a set of criteria that can be applied consistently against each item in the backlog. At Microsoft, these criteria are described as a "bug bar."

So, when it comes to triaging my wardrobe, I need a set of criteria to process against the clothes hanging on the racks. So here is a first pass set of criteria...

• haven't worn the item for more than 2 years
• the item is older than 10 years
• the item is so out of fashion I can't imagine wearing it ever again
• the item is faulty or has developed wear or holes
• the item does not fit (I lost a lot of weight since I left Kansas City 5 years ago)

All items meeting at least one of these criteria will be placed in the third bucket - the one headed for a Salvation Army store.

• the item is out of season but not out of fashion

Summer clothes aren't needed now that fall (autumn) is with us. However, they can be "postponed" for use next summer. I'll sort these to the back. These represent the second bucket - clothes postponed for future wear.

That will leave me with the current fall/winter clothing. I can then do a gap analysis (against my unwritten requirements) on these and determine what I could do with buying to complete my new fall/winter wardrobe. Technorati tag: Agile, David+Anderson, Software+Engineering