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 featuresw 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 games 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.

1.Discuss the problems and inefficiencies the testing process creates for the company.

2.Discuss the changes that could be made to make the process more efficient and explain how an information system could support those changes.