A top-10 video games publisher in the US used VeriGames to successfully increase its games publishing capacity

The customer publishes video games to run on PCs as well as gaming platforms from Sony and Nintendo. For the 2006 holiday season in the US, it was targeting a significantly enlarged portfolio of games. Offshoring was chosen as the preferred route to quickly ramp up the Publisher QA resources to control costs as well as increase flexibility in team sizes.

VeriGames was chosen as the preferred offshore supplier for its combination of ready game-testing infrastructure and long-standing background in testing & QA.

The key challenge was to integrate a remote team into the customer’s established QA structure. This was achieved with tremendous success through detailed planning, risk management and joint task forces.

In VeriGames the customer was able to develop a reliable long-term offshore testing partner for formal execution of publisher QA to

 Reduce elapsed time for testing
 Control costs while increasing the volume of testers engaged in game play testing
 Reduce turnaround time between development and QA activities, and
 Increase testing coverage for all its games

The key determinants of success were

A. An engagement planning phase onsite at the outset to determine
       Long term resource needs with game development schedules factoring in possible           risks of delays.
       A communication protocol (interaction points and frequency) between the            organizations.
       Metrics for the engagement with which the management on both sides would track           the progress of the relationship.

B. A knowledge transfer and activity planning stage onsite for each game to
       Design a test strategy and test plan .
       Formal Knowledge transfer for each game from the customer.
       Customising and reviewing existing test assets and test case preparation.
       Determining execution metrics.

C. Pro-active risk management practices including
       Rigorous identification and tracking of risks .
       Round-the-clock availability of senior team members on the phone.

D. Two-shift processes to provide an overlap with US office hours.

E. Openness in communication and expectation management from both sides with daily     reporting from India and constant monitoring of the dashboard of metrics for games     testing as well as the engagement.

This is what the customer had to say about the effort for a major project within the relationship.

“Thank you all for your hard work in seeing this project through to the end.  You all did a very good job of quickly getting up to speed and becoming an integral part of the QA process.  I look forward to working with you all again on future projects.”