The QA department in any tech company plays a crucial role. Not only are they reviewing products for errors, but they’re also assisting in fixing them.
They take care of all the stages starting from when they receive requirements for building a module, from scratch, to when it’s ready, to when it’s going live, to when it is live! (No wonder they run around screaming ‘IT’S ALIIIIIIIIIVE!)
Bugs or any other issues with any module can occur at any stage, so the team is ready and on standby.
Creating detailed, comprehensive, well-structured test plans and test cases, estimating, prioritizing, planning, and coordinating quality testing activities, is the job of a Quality Assurance Engineer. (Sheeesh! THAT is a lot…)
Generally, Quality Assurance is important because:
Quality assurance saves what we all love – time and money
Testing increases confidence in the product
Quality assurance prevents breakdowns and ensures stability
Quality assurance increases the safety level of the product
It enhances the user experience
To further dig into this field we spoke with Mashhood ur Rehman, Head of Quality Assurance – Big Immersive –
“The job of a QA is quite literally from birth to grave. As soon as we receive requirements from the higher-ups, we gather all the information and then create our own documentation that includes test plans and test cases. We follow the following STLC stages:
STLC stages
Requirement Analysis
Test Planning
Test case development
Test Execution
Test Cycle closure
As we finalize our testing there is a release plan which has all the checkpoints of all QA and development activities. After all of this, and the deployment, we conduct further testing at that stage too, testing basically never ends.” says Mashhood.
“We perform different types of testing during our testing life cycle such as Functional testing, Non functional testing, Performance testing, Regression testing, Sanity testing, Security testing, Smoke testing, and White-box testing” adds Hassan Tahir SQA – Big Immersive
To find out further about the current on-going activities in the QA Department, we asked Mashhood a few questions.
What projects are we currently working on? Which one of you guys is working on which one of the projects at the moment?
Mashhood: First of all we have all of the IPs, Dynamite Entertainment, Kevin Hart, Nitro League, Godzilla vs Kong, and many others, we have assigned those to Maryam who is handling IPs very well. Moving on, we have Virtua Marketplace, Hassan Tahir is the main guy for that, Uraiba is looking after Virtua Metaverse, and Talal is handling apps. Two new additions to the team Waqar and Muazzam are assigned to one of the IPs.
Is there any challenge that you’re currently facing in general?
Mashhood: “We have recently assigned each one of the QA team members to each project recently and I am looking over each one of the projects with them. They have adjusted and adapted to this new work setting very quickly and I am very proud of them. But yes, we need more people on the team, and we are currently looking for new resources. For example, when it comes to the metaverse, we need someone with that kind of vision, since this industry is new and developing it’s a challenge to find someone that easily. We are doing well but we need an extra pair of eyes with that specific kind of exposure in games.”
What is the scope of QA in terms of career and what skills do you think are necessary to become a QA? Specifically in Big Immersive?
Mashhood: “The scope of QA in Big Immersive? The sky is the limit. Most companies in the Pakistan software industry do not have much to offer QAs in terms of learning and growth, they have grunt work and a monotonous job. Whereas here at BiM, the job of a QA is not repetitive. As a QA, when it comes to testing we have a lot of interesting things to experience. Our Landsale has different attributes, crib is different, condo has a different mechanism, so you see, the work of a QA is never boring. You will experience working on metaverse, international IPs, apps, and the NFT marketplace, to name a few. They will be experiencing working in multidimensional spaces.
The next part of your question, I’m afraid, has a difficult answer. When we interview someone for QA, what I see is a lack of interest in learning and exposure. People are out there looking for a stable job and income, understandable given the current condition of the country, but what we need here is someone who is interested in learning and has a vision and exposure in the relevant industry. Our recent finding based on interviews lately is that we’ve come to a realization that Pakistan does not have blockchain testers. You will find plenty of Blockchain developers but not testers. Many of those too are self-taught individuals, so they lack the understanding of basics, they are familiar with the terms but they don’t understand their functionalities. We need people who not only have done coding but should also have done its testing themselves. Next is, again since it’s a relatively new industry when it comes to the metaverse, most QAs are oblivious to VR and AR, and even Mixed Reality. Some of them haven’t heard of these before since their exposure is limited to banking, ticketing, and health tech apps. So you see our problem here. We need driven people, we need interested individuals with vision. Because we have a lot to offer them!”
The role of Quality Assurance is essential. From the beginning to the end of any module, a QA team is testing it at every stage. The Quality Assurance department at Big Immersive is always on the hunt for individuals who have exposure and a vision, and in return, we have a lot of growth and learning to offer. (and yes good money for your skills -wink wink- )