I have come to realize that QA is a perfectionist’s dream job. I get to seek out and destroy flaws, I get to document them in defect tracking software, and I can create organized test cases and test suites documenting the comprehensive progress. It’s a rewarding feeling.
Edline is a company based in Chicago that creates web portal solutions for schools. The concept of Edline is to act as a “bulletin board” for posting items such as grades and other student information. Edline is a highly beneficial tool that helps digitalize the classroom and make life easier for students and their parents.
The first few months at Edline were spent in a Technical Support role. This was a unique idea that served as a method of learning how Edline worked and what the customers experience.
After this highly beneficial period, I took what I learned and used that to better test Edline. I suggested a variety of usability enhancements in order to help improve the user experience of Edline.
Much of my time was spent working with developers, testing new builds, and logging defects into Test Track. I regularly utilized several testing techniques including unit, integration, compatibility, usability, and regression testing. I also devised a document covering the benefits and risks of the migration of items from Test Track to the more affordable Bugzilla.
Lipper specializes in mutual fund intelligence. They produce software and other aids that help analyze mutual funds. The main software program I was responsible for was called Lipper Insight. This program gathers mutual fund information from an online database, and then the user can choose a variety of methods to display, interpret, and graph the information using the program’s many features.
I spent the majority of my time testing Lipper Insight during its early developmental stages. Working at Lipper was a very dynamic job. The development team utilized the “extreme programming” lifecycle, which meant there would be new builds of the software to test each day.
With several project stakeholders involved, the goals and timeline of the project often changed, as well as the roles of the test team. I began focusing my efforts on technical writing and writing comprehensive test cases so that testing progress could be monitored more accurately in versioned documentation.
I had the opportunity to design and implement a full-featured computer game during my senior year of college. Quoridor is a board game created by Gigamic Games in which two to four players advance tokens across a board in order to get to the other side. Players move one space at a time on a square grid, while utilizing “walls” that can be used to block an opponent to facilitate one’s own progress. The mission of “The Quoridor Team” was to create a computer game version of Quoridor that would also allow for AI and network play.
My focus in the project was user interface design and user experience. After the programmers on the team designed the initial gameplay, I adjusted the interface and board layout to improve the flow of the game and make the game easier to use. I performed an extensive set of one-on-one usability tests with actual students from SIUE, who our client deemed to be the software’s target audience. Based on suggestions from the students and with approval of the team and our client, I could then adjust the interface and layout of the software accordingly.
I also acted as the team’s technical writer. I created four important documents. The Requirements Analysis Document defines what the existing product functionality was and what the the new intended functionality will accomplish. This covers the basics of the board game, the functional and non-functional requirements, optional features, and the intended flow of the program. The Project Plan covers the project time lines, risk management, team structure and roles, and coding and testing plans. Setting realistic goals and staying on track were the team’s primary concerns. In the System Design document, the team’s design goals, lifecycle model, and system architecture are defined and explained. The user manual explains the game from start to finish - how to install the program, how to play the basic game, how to play a network game, how to use the logs to track game progress, and how to create AI modules for the game.
