>>5
The plural of anecdote is not data. And to counterbalance your point, I spent all day trying to convince upper management that I shouldn't have to open a defect ticket to remove test code that tests a requirement that has been removed from consideration, and that I can do it normally under a workflow ticket. Their argument was that since the test has already been witnessed by the prime contractor, removing fulfillment of the requirement is by definition a change in the core application, even though no code changes in the application itself. (I.e., I would be in effect retroactively removing a requirement passage from the test artifact record.) I certainly can't leave the test code as-is, because if I do it will keep breaking the continuous regressions on the test server by reporting invalid requirements as passed.
The reason I don't want to open a defect ticket instead of a workflow ticket is that a defect ticket requires code change freeze on the entire affected CSU, and since 3 out of 7 of my team members haven't yet passed security clearance required to request lab access, we're drastically understaffed as it is and I can't take the mandatory 4-day freeze period (two for review, one for peer review meeting, plus one for signoffs to take effect) on the integration branch. I could manually copy all of the code out of source control and distribute it to the three team members that have access to the lab, but then they'd have to manually diff their code changes against one another once the four day freeze period is up, and for at least two of those days I'd be stuck in mandatory meetings explaining to a different set of division heads why I imposed a four day freeze for no actual code changes. Plus, the build system is a decades-old in house collection of ant scripts, makefiles, and rpm trickery that doesn't completely work if the integration branch is frozen.
So as it is, I wasted a day trying to make sure I didn't waste two days. At least I'm a few hours ahead, and my account got approved to work overtime this weekend.