Right First Time” A Top 10 video games publisher in the US used SQS Game Testing to successfully increase its games publishing capacity.
Background
The customer publishes video games to run on PCs as well as gaming platforms from Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo. The customer was targeting a significantly enlarged portfolio of games. Offshoring was chosen as the preferred route to quickly ramp up the publisher quality assurance resources so as to control costs as well as increase flexibility in team sizes.
The Challenge
The customer had to ensure that games are released to market at the right time as decided by the production team. The key challenge was to integrate a remote team into the customer’s established quality assurance structure.
The Solution
SQS was chosen as the preferred offshore supplier for its combination of ready game-testing infrastructure, its long-standing background in testing and quality assurance and its in-depth experience in games testing. A well-defined engagement model provides the basis for the project, while mutually agreed key performance indicators measured the success of the outsourced quality assurance. The integration of the remote team was achieved with tremendous success through detailed planning, risk management and joint task forces.
The key determinants of success were:
An engagement planning phase onsite at the outset to determine
- Long term resource needs with game development schedules factoring in possible risks of delays.
- A communication protocol (interaction points and frequency) between the organisations.
- Metrics for the engagement with which the management on both sides would track the progress of the relationship.
A knowledge transfer and activity planning stage onsite for each game to
- Design a test strategy and test plan.
- Formal knowledge transfer for each game from the customer.
- Customising and reviewing existing test assets and test case preparation.
- Determining execution metrics.
Proactive risk management practices including
- Rigorous identification and tracking of risks.
- Round-the-clock availability of senior team members on the phone.
- Two-shift processes to provide an overlap with US office hours.
Openness in communication and expectation management on both sides
- with daily reporting from India and constant monitoring of the dashboard of metrics for games testing as well as the engagement.
The Benefits
In SQS Game Testing the customer was able to develop a reliable long-term offshore testing partner for formal execution of publisher quality assurance to
- Reduce elapsed time for testing
- Control costs while increasing the volume of testers engaged in game play testing
- Reduce turnaround time between development and quality assurance activities
- Increase testing coverage for all its games
The customer commented about the effort for a major project within the relationship: “Thank you all for your hard work in seeing this project through to the end. You all did a very good job of quickly getting up to speed and becoming an integral part of the quality assurance process. I look forward to working with you all again on future projects.”
