Test Design: The Limits of Reason

What the talk is about

Oleksandr Donchuk explains how to organize test documentation on a game project without drowning in it. He suggests combining checks into longer scenarios with points of no return to help localize defects, and keeping detail moderate: testers know the product, while needless specifics like a room's color force constant rewrites. Expected results, however, must always be precise. The volume of documentation should be estimated from available resources, number of features and deadlines. Typical mistakes he lists include dependent cases, no analysis of written documents and no developer review. Among techniques he recommends functional checks with checklists for feature groups, boundary values and pairwise testing, which helped notably with weapons in a shooter. He also proposes dropping redundant case fields and tracking cases in a bug tracker. Useful for test designers and QA leads.