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如何节省外部QA成本并获得最佳成效

发布时间:2014-05-12 15:53:34 Tags:,,,

作者:Rad Smyk

我曾经在波兰担任了将近三年的外部QA人员,在这份工作中,我们有不同类型的客户,其中包括最大型的公司,以及小型独立工作室。他们都有一些普遍错误——其实完全可以避免其中一些错误。所以,如果你想外包QA工作,完成任务,同时又不给人留下你们是一家糟糕公司的印象,那么不妨参考一下我的建议。

1.要及时提供你的产品

这一点真的不需要再强调了。如果你说产品周一就会准备好——那就要在周一早上8点准备好。若你的测试人员在数个小时或一天后有另一个项目要测试,他们就无法为你的产品赶工了。没有人希望数个小时之后又要重新开始寻找代码,以确保它们不会马上变成垃圾。如果这样,人们就会失去注意力——他们只是在游戏中漫无目地地闲逛,但却没有什么效率。这是很浪费时间和金钱的事情。

game test(from kxpc.com)

game test(from kxpc.com)

2.如果你正处于alpha阶段,再补充一些内容吧!

当你处于开发早期阶段时,这一点尤为重要。你的游戏很无趣和丑陋,而那些测试者却要一天8小时盯着这些充斥几何图形的灰色屏幕。并且你的测试版本中还没有合理添加功能,也几乎没有什么东西可以测试,因为整个系统都这么简单,人们马上就可以极为迅速地找到所有的交互性。而如果测试者丧失注意力时会怎么样——那你就不会获得什么成效,耗时耗财。其解决方法就是在游戏中一点一点地添加新内容。测试人员喜欢新内容。如果你处于alpha阶段——还是加点东西吧。他们可以更彻底和富有创意地进行测试。如果一整个月只是让他们测试几乎没有什么变化的模版,最终会把他们逼走的。

3.实实在在地修复漏洞

我想这一点不应该位居第一。想象下这种场景,当你连续工作一周,正在生成报告之际,接二连三地发现了一百多个漏洞,其中包括一些重大的漏洞。但它们都卡在“开发进程”之中,不为“该死的开发团队”所察觉。这通常发生于当你在使用工作室的漏洞追踪器,以及你自己团队的成员在追踪器中汇报了这些漏洞,并从由获得了进展之时。但测试团队却没有发现这一点。有时候,突然会发现没有人在乎这一点。因为作为开发者的你都不在乎测试人员的工作——他们当然也不会在乎你的工作。

4.维持漏洞追踪器

这是另一个“显而易见”的问题。如果你有一个配置合理的漏洞追踪器,它自己就能执行一切操作了,对吗?但显然事实并没有这么简单。如果你同一名外部QA合作,请先准备好一些事项。总结标准,即描述中要有什么内容,在漏洞追踪器中呈现合理的版本控制。此外,还要尽量快速对报告作出回应。它们总是难免瑕疵,如果你不快点摆脱它们,它们又会产生其他报告。这是因为测试人员处理的每个项目都是不同的,有时候他们一周要换4次项目。事情会变得很棘手,如果你不记住这一点,你就会陷入一片巨大的混乱中。

5.及时响应测试人员

这是一个最常被忽略的问题。如果只是为了找到常规的漏洞,你不需要这么做。游戏设计文件在寻找忽隐忽现的纹理方面不会发生变化。你的内部QA也会处理武器的平衡性。但外部QA通常会有提出问题和建议的动力。最好是通过电子邮件解决(即使是最奇怪的)问题或针对某建议进行富有深度的评价(尽管你可能会拒绝该建议),这样有助于提升团队的士气。这是同远程团队保持联系,并且以一种会让他们融入其中的态度联络他们的最便捷方式。如果他们在乎项目的问题——那你就得到了很棒的QA。

总结

总而言之,作为开发者只要进行一些改变,就能极大改变你同测试人员的关系。相似我,他们会更加用心地测试你的游戏,只要你表现出希望他们投入工作的愿望。因为测试人员通常是勤快而富有激情的人——多数人本可在其他领域实现一翻成就,在更好的环境中赚到更多钱。但他们喜欢体验和测试,并且探索你的系统。所以请为他们的工作提供更多便利。(本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译,拒绝任何不保留版权的转载,如需转载请联系:游戏邦

How To Not Lose Money On External QA – And Have The Best Productivity

by Rad Smyk

This blog post is a bit of an addition to a post by Anna Jenelius, and I suggest that you really should read it first. The post is also a bit of musing on topics that disturbed me when I was working as a QA tester. Obviously, no connections should be made between my personal opinions and my former employer’s, as they are completely separate.

I have been working for almost 3 years in an environment which is hardly comparable to the one described by Anna. It was an external QA, located in Poland, which was a place for developers to outsource purely “bug-hunting” tasks. We had different sorts of clients, ranging from the biggest players to the small indie studios. All of them made common mistakes – some of which are easily avoided. So, if you want to outsource your QA, get the job done, and not leave some people with an impression that you are a terrible company, follow my advice.

1. Do not be late with your builds.

I cannot stress this one enough. If you say that the build will be ready for Monday – it should be ready for Monday, 8AM in the morning. Because your testers will not test the build, when the next one is due in a few hours or a day. Nobody wants to reproduce all freshly found bugs a few hours later, to make sure that they will not go to trash immediately. Instead of that, people lose focus – they explore your game, wander around, but do nothing productive. This is losing time and money.

2. If you’re in alpha – add things!

This is especially important when you are in the early phases of the development. Your game is boring and ugly, and people who test it are staring at the grey screens filled with geometry for 8 hours daily. And there are no features added properly. And there is barely anything to test, because the system is still so simple, that all interactions can be explored really fast. And what happens then is that testers are losing focus – and you lose productivity and money. The solution is adding new content to the game, bit by bit. Testers love new content. If you are in alpha – add anything, but add something. They will test it thoroughly and creatively. Leave them for a month with builds that are exactly the same, and you will lose them.

3. Fix the bugs. Really, just fix them.

I am not sure if this should not be the first. Imagine a situation, when you work for one week, producing reports. Then the second one. And the third. And you reported a hundred of bugs, including some of big importance. But they are stuck as “in progress”, somewhere in the great, deep void of “that damn dev team”. This usually happens when you use lab’s bugtracker and your own – somebody just pastes the bugs into your tracker and they get processed there. But the testing team does not see that. And at some point, suddenly, nobody cares. Because if you, as a developer, do not care about testers’ work – they won’t care about yours.

4. Maintain your bugtracker.

That’s another “obvious” one. If you have a properly configured bugtracker, it does everything by itself, right? But apparently that does not happen so easily. If you work with an external QA, please have some things prepared. Summary standard, what exactly should go into the description, proper version control present in the bugtracker. Also – react as fast as you can to the reports. They will have flaws, and if you do not get rid of them quickly, they will be reproduced in another reports. That’s because for testers every project is different, and sometimes they switch projects 4 times a week. Things can get confusing, and if you do not remember that, you will have a huge mess. And lots of duplicates.

5. Keep testers informed.

This is probably the most overlooked one. To have typical bugs found, you do not have to do this. Game design doc will not change anything in terms on finding flickering textures. And your internal QA will handle the weapon’s balance just fine. But external QA always has the drive to ask questions and post suggestions. And there is nothing raising morale in a team better than an e-mail addressing even the weirdest of concerns, or a thoughtful comment on a suggestion, even if it is rejected. These are the easiest ways to keep in touch with your remote team, and to connect with them in a way that will make them involved and caring. And if they care – you get a superb QA.

Conclusion

All in all – external QAs are the trenches, and we all know about it. But if you, as a developer, change some things, you can change your relationship with your testers dramatically. And believe me that they will work hard to test your game, given that you show that you want them to. Because testers are usually intelligent and passionate people – most of them could be somewhere else, doing other jobs, earning more cash in better conditions. But they love playing and testing, and exploring the boundaries of your systems. Just let them do that more easily.(source:gamasutra


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