Graphs are just as good as pictures

In the most recent issue of game developer, Midway's QA Manager, Paul Sterngold, describes a situation in which a miscommunication between his teams and their outsourced QA partners led to an unexpectedly large bill at the end of the test cycle. He goes on to describe Midway’s solution, with the support of Amritt Ventures, which involves a series of graphs that quickly describe a project's status and performance statistics of the QA test teams.

Being in QA, I spent some time reading over the article and attempted to analyze the graphs, hoping to garner some information that may prove useful to my own company. After a while I noticed a trend that reinforces a one of my fundamental beliefs about this industry: more hours do not produce results. A quick comparison of the upper-right blue graph to the two yellow graphs indicates that as tester hours go up, the number and quality of the bugs go down. All the while, costs appear to be going up as indicated by the green graphs. Granted, I am deciphering these graphs with only the data and information I can glean from them. There may be more to the story, but as my title suggests, graphs are just as good as pictures.

Quality of life is very important to me, as it should be to all in the business. I have not been in the industry too long and I am fortunate to have worked myself into a position that does not require extensive overtime. I have done my share of late nights, but it has been my work ethic that has earned the respect of peers and advancement to my current position. I, like the people I respect in the industry, am willing to work as many hours as it takes to get the job done. If I feel I have given my all in a normal workday (by which I mean eight to nine hours), I see no need to stay any longer than necessary. And still, despite overwhelming evidence that supports it, people continue to believe that more is better when it comes to working a QA team. I, on the other hand, feel that a team of well-trained, motivated individuals will consistently out perform low-paid, under-trained, and over-worked testers any day of the week. Except on Saturday and Sunday, their job will be done within normal working hours.