Consider the following scenario for a video game development company: EA Games i
ID: 398198 • Letter: C
Question
Consider the following scenario for a video game development company:
EA Games is a video game development company. The creation of their video games require ideation, design and development before it is launched to public. This is called Post Production, which is also the most challenging part for EA Games. Due to an inefficient process and lack of communication between the developer, testers and Project managers, the “post-production” phase takes longer than usual to complete.
Post-production begins when the game is considered "feature complete" and all of the code has been written and art has been completed. This is when an alpha version of the game is created and is supplied to the game's test department to bang away at and find bugs and major flaws in the game that need to be changed whether by the artists or programmers. Every single bug regardless of how major or minor is documented and attempted to be fixed. There are 3 types of Bugs (in the order of severity)
Type A bug: This one is the most critical and has to be fixed immediately. When this is discovered, everyone in the team i.e. artists, programmers, or AI programmers are emailed. The entire testing process is halted until someone claims ownership of the bug and provides direction on whether to continue testing or to wait for a fix. Once the fix has been completed the new changes are released back to the testers and they must restart their testing.
Type B or C bug: the testing team documents the bug in a central location. Once all testing has been completed this document is sent to development and they determine which items to fix and when to re-release. Once the game is re-released, the testing cycle starts all over again, however, this is still within the 4-week timeline. If a major “A” bug is found, the testers have to report an A bug again and wait (See steps in A. above)
Typically, the test department is given 4 weeks to complete the testing. However, issues arrive when the test department finds a mission critical bug and cannot proceed with testing until the bug has been resolved. At such time, the testing team must completely redo all their testing because such a large change could potentially impact the entire game.
Once all the bugs have been fixed and tested a final version of the game is made by the testers and sent to the console maker to get tested and approved for release on the system in question.
Presently, management has no way to properly plan for the testing phase and they are unable to effectively track how many bugs were reported, by who, and the priority. Having this information would be helpful for planning purposes and would provide visibility into the current process
2). Diagram the new Process. Diagram the new, improved process.
Explanation / Answer
The major challenge that EA Games is facing is in the Post Production Phase and one of the primary reason for them is the lack of communication between developers, testers and Project managers. In order to fix or atleast mitigate the loss of time and effort is to ensure that there is a better flow of communication between these teams. By having a proper well maanged flow of communication, there are chances that the bugs are identified much in advance and are sorted out in a quicker time which would also not keep the testers waiting and redo the whole work again. Below is a proposed flow of work:
While the developers does the coding and the art work, they should involve the testing teams to detect any bugs after comletion of every artwork or coding. The testig teams shouls test the codes and detect bugs and fix it to ensure that it can be reached to the next stage. Meanwhile, the Project manager can co ordinate for the similar kind of activities across functions and ensure this process runs smoothly.