Many years ago a friend of mine was working in the video games industry. He kept getting recurring bugs that would crash the game, but would sometimes only occur for certain testers and then only after some hours of game play.
When asked what they had done just prior to the crash, the testers would often be unable to remember clearly.
His solution was to take a trip to the local junk shop where he bought a number of old beta-max video recorders. When the testers were able to simply record on tape everything they did, they were better placed to determine the steps to reproduce the failure.
I have though of this many times in the years since, when I get a bug report from a tester that I cannot for the life of me reproduce. Every now and again I suggest using video recorders in project meetings. It usually raises a smile, but never as yet raised any action. Ho Hum.
Many years ago a friend of mine was working in the video games industry. He kept getting recurring bugs that would crash the game, but would sometimes only occur for certain testers and then only after some hours of game play.
ReplyDeleteWhen asked what they had done just prior to the crash, the testers would often be unable to remember clearly.
His solution was to take a trip to the local junk shop where he bought a number of old beta-max video recorders. When the testers were able to simply record on tape everything they did, they were better placed to determine the steps to reproduce the failure.
I have though of this many times in the years since, when I get a bug report from a tester that I cannot for the life of me reproduce. Every now and again I suggest using video recorders in project meetings. It usually raises a smile, but never as yet raised any action. Ho Hum.