If you whish to discover a way how to turn negative vibes between testers and developers into something positive – here is a great solution for that. The thing I like to introduce is quite old but even today in our brave new DevOps world an evergreen.
Many years ago in the world wide web I stumbled over a PDF called Bug Fix Bingo. A nice funny game for IT professionals. This little funny game originally was invent by the software testing firm K. J. Ross & Associates. Unfortunately the original site disappeared long ago so I decided to conserve this great idea in this blog post.
I can recommend this game also for folks they are not so deep into testing, but have to participate in a lot of IT meetings. Just print the file, bring some copies to your next meeting and enjoy whats gonna happen. I did it several times. Beside the fun we had it changed something. So let’s have a look into the concept and rules.
Bug Fix Bingo is based on a traditional Bingo just with a few adaptions. Everyone can join the game easily without a big preparation, because its really simple. Instead of numbers the Bingo uses statements from developers in defect review meetings to mark off squares.
Rules:
- Bingo squares are marked off when a developer makes the matching statement during bug fix sessions.
- Testers must call “Bingo” immediately upon completing a line of 5 squares either horizontally, vertically or diagonally.
- Statements that arise as result of a bug that later becomes “deferred”, “as designed”, or “not to fixed” should be classified as not marked.
- Bugs that are not reported in an incident report can not be used.
- Statements should also be recorded against the bug in the defect tracking system for later confirmation.
- Any tester marks off all 25 statements should be awarded 2 weeks stress leave immediately.
- Any developer found using all 25 statements should be seconded into the test group for a period of no less than 6 months for re-education.
| “It works on my machine.” | “Where were you when the program blew up?” | “Why do you want to do it in that way?” | “You can’t use that version on your system.” | “Even thought it doesn’t work, how does it feel.” |
| “Did you check for a virus on your system?” | “Somebody must have changed my code.” | “It works, but it hasn’t been tested.” | “THIS can’t be the source of that module in weeks!” | “I can’t test anything!” |
| “It’s just some unlucky coincidence.” | “You must have the wrong version.” | “I haven’t touched that module in weeks.” | “There is something funky in your data.” | “What did you type in wrong to get it to crash?” |
| “It must be a hardware problem.” | “How is that possible?” | “It worked yesterday.” | “It’s never done that before.” | “That’s weird …” |
| “That’s scheduled to be fixed in the next release.” | “Yes, we knew that would happen.” | “Maybe we just don’t support that platform.” | “It’s a feature. We just haven’t updated the specs.” | “Surly nobody is going to use the program like that.” |
Incidentally, developers have a game like this too. They score points every time a QA person tries to raise a defect on functionality that is working as specified.
For your pleasure I place the original file of the Bug Fix Bingo here, so you can download and print it out for your next meeting. Comments about your experiences playing this game are very welcomed and feel free to share if you like this post. Stay updated and subscribe my newsletter.
