To make the most of our potential in this ever-changing world, we are needed to express ourselves in such a way that others fully understand our concerns or demands. This not only ensures that our lives remain a lot simpler and productive but also make this world a better place. Thus, the key to happiness and fulfillment is apparently related to a robust communication bridge, established between people.
Same goes with software testing or any sort of QA testing in the world of gaming.
Tests report can serve their intended purposes well only if they highlight all the important points and present themselves effectively without errors to affect the desired results.
Track Or Crash:
Absolutely, the choice is yours. It is important to hire an intelligent and ardent tester who can not only find the bugs but also convey the messages or write bug reports efficiently without any errors.
Remember, it is equally important to describe the bugs efficiently in game testing because eventually, your message would make the thing work rather than an arbitrarily reported bug. Thus, game development companies should not compromise on investing time in hiring quality testers, who can write 100% error-free bug reports. No matter how good your bug tracking database is, it would not serve your purpose well, until or unless you would fill it up with consistent and relevant information. Lots and lots of companies are entering the game testing industry with the mass recruitment of fresh candidates and almost no technical interviews. While benefiting from low salaried fresh QA testers, such companies offer huge discounts to gain new business and survive the stiff competition. Ultimately the one purchasing such service suffers badly with poorly written and useless bug reports. A few well-written grammatically correct sentences are much better than an error-ridden lengthy report, which would end up wasting a lot of developer’s time.
Over the years, many bug tracking tools like Mantis, JIRA, and Bugzilla have come to the forefront to make a lot of things easier for testers and developers. But, once again the competency of these tracking tools is directly associated with the quality of reporting in testers. Ultimately, it would be the testers who would decide which bug is critical or trivial. Once done with that identification, a tester can present the information precisely without creating any confusion in the minds of the developer.
A tester should be equally good in reporting as he should be in playing games.
Tester: An Effective Communicator
We all have our passions, but it is important to channelize our energy in the right direction so that we can extract the best out of us.
A person has to be passionate about gaming if he wants to be a tester, but at the same time he should be endowed with good English writing skills so that he can send his messages effectively to ensure that there is no communication gap which otherwise may prove detrimental for everyone, from developer to tester and the game publisher. Computer-proficient graduates with ISTQB Certificate can enter the field of QA testing but what is essential is that they should have active language skills to report well.
It is also important for the game testing companies to hire those testers who can report and write in a way that is easy for the other stakeholders to understand what’s reported. Ultimately, the responsibility is upon the companies (game publisher or tester) because a buggy game can certainly ruin their reputation, which is earned after putting in years of hard work and perseverance.
Cut To The Chase:
Game development companies should pay attention in hiring experienced and attentive game testers rather than wasting time in finding the ‘perfect’ bug tracking tool. A well-written bug report can have all the attributes of conveying a message effectively even if it is written in a plain text over an MS Word Doc file or Google Docs. Always ask for a free demo or go for a QA trial (pilot project) whenever considering 3rd party QA testing companies to ensure that you are hiring the right and capable QA testers.
Even the best bug tracking tools in the world will remain useless if they are not put to use in compliance with norms of error-free reporting.
Article by,
Laxmikant B. Thipse
Founder & CEO
GameCloud Technologies Pvt Ltd
