When I joined this team at the beginning of the semester I was still unhappy about my last team getting cut due mostly to a factor that was completely beyond our control (the server service we were using for hosting was down for the hour we were demoing our game to the faculty). I was also quite worried to be joining a team that had fired their artist last semester. As the semester started and I became more familiar with the team the worry and the unhappiness faded away, the original team was a joy to work with and the other new members of the team were equally as easy to work with. I was surprised how much I came to care about the game given that at the start of the semester I wasn't particularly interested in the premise.
The team got off to a slow start adding several new movement schemes and not much else. We did not focus on putting together a stable build and chose instead to keep adding features. This caused a great deal of issues early on as we tried to add several features and weren't able to test them thoroughly and they caused game breaking bugs. After a several weeks of this we stopped, took stock and realized exactly what we'd been doing up to that point, we buckled down and resolved to focus on having stable builds. With a focus on always having a stable build at the end of a work session we started to catch up to where we needed to be. It still took crunch time for us to finally catch up to where we needed to be and last week's Alpha deadline enforced that crunch time. We are currently where we should be and even during the period where we were behind the team was dedicated and willing to pull all-nighters to get our work done.
Friday, April 8, 2016
Spit and Polish
Semester 2 Week 12 (4/1-4/8)
This last week has been a little more mellow than the previous weeks have been because we had made the milestones that we had set for ourselves and the class alpha and beta milestones. Reaching these milestones did not mean we stopped working but it meant that our focus has shifted to polish and bug fixing since we are no longer adding features. Changing our focus to bug fixing has shown us that we need to get more and better testing from the school's QA lab.
In testing our practice has previously been to test on PC and Android because the mobile builds lagged behind our PC builds in terms of stability. This practice has meant that bugs tended to go undiscovered for longer on Android and iOS. Now that we are correcting this poor testing practice we are only testing on Android, I am working to make sure that we will also be testing on iOS as well. This shift will improve the quality of our QA feedback since the platforms we are developing for are Android and iOS, the bugs and issues that the testers will be encountering will be relevant and provide more accurate causes to the programmers.
This last week has been a little more mellow than the previous weeks have been because we had made the milestones that we had set for ourselves and the class alpha and beta milestones. Reaching these milestones did not mean we stopped working but it meant that our focus has shifted to polish and bug fixing since we are no longer adding features. Changing our focus to bug fixing has shown us that we need to get more and better testing from the school's QA lab.
In testing our practice has previously been to test on PC and Android because the mobile builds lagged behind our PC builds in terms of stability. This practice has meant that bugs tended to go undiscovered for longer on Android and iOS. Now that we are correcting this poor testing practice we are only testing on Android, I am working to make sure that we will also be testing on iOS as well. This shift will improve the quality of our QA feedback since the platforms we are developing for are Android and iOS, the bugs and issues that the testers will be encountering will be relevant and provide more accurate causes to the programmers.
Wednesday, April 6, 2016
Adventures in QA land
For most of this semester I have been in the QA liaison for my team, for us this means that I prepare the test plan and feedback forms for Champlain's QA sessions. I also oversee the creation and execution of the smoke test and the team's QA sessions. The experience has been very helpful and hectic.
I have learned a lot from being the QA liaison this semester. One of the things that Champlain College doesn't really teach is the value of QA. Admittedly its a hard concept to fit into a classroom but it has informed and improved my priorities when programming as well as given me a much more useful set of tools to process feedback.
The semester is winding down and while that does not mean that the programming has gotten any less urgent it does mean that the focus has shifted to bugs and polish rather than new features or UI or such. The shift to bug fixing and polish lets me as the QA liaison test for specific issues and worry far less about having a stable build to take to QA.
I have learned a lot from being the QA liaison this semester. One of the things that Champlain College doesn't really teach is the value of QA. Admittedly its a hard concept to fit into a classroom but it has informed and improved my priorities when programming as well as given me a much more useful set of tools to process feedback.
The semester is winding down and while that does not mean that the programming has gotten any less urgent it does mean that the focus has shifted to bugs and polish rather than new features or UI or such. The shift to bug fixing and polish lets me as the QA liaison test for specific issues and worry far less about having a stable build to take to QA.
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