Call of Duty is the flagship franchise for Activision Publishing. This project has multiple studios work together to create yearly releases and live services in this First Person Shooter Juggernaut.
Summary
I started working at Activision QA in 2019 on Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 as a Quality Assurance Tester. Working on Jira and Devtrack I would find, write and regress bugs in the game. I was on that project through sunset and from there I moved onto working on Call of Duty: Modern Warfare pre-launch and then into the next year moving onto Call of Duty: Warzone. I was promoted to Senior Quality Assurance Tester and focus on working on managing a team to take on requests from the developers and facilitating large scale testing including cross studio playtests. On Warzone I was promoted to Associate Project Lead where I focused on creating test cases, writing requests from documentation, and cooperating with developers to make sure testing is coordinated across our studio. With Vanguard I helped sunset a live product and moved onto Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III in pre-production all the way to today. Leading our Singleplayer team into the pre-release of the product. I have also headed up our Automation team in working on utilzing the tools created, formulating test plans with them, and communicating with our devs on how to better improve them.
In Depth
Roles
Associate QA Project Lead: My responsibilities are focused on Project Management. Assisting Project Leads in creating and monitoring Test Cases for our testers that accurately cover all aspects of the game as well as being able to convey progress on those cases in milestone assessments reports. I will create trackers that can record our progress in an informative approachable manner to help in our teams reporting. Reviewing project performance and how to most effectively increase that performance are also core parts of my job. Part of this review and reporting is having good communication with my Seniors and Testers to make sure we are actively completing our assigned work. Cross-Studio communication is also a big part of my work as an Associate Project Lead to make sure our test cases are as detailed as possible as well as making sure any specified requests are being completed by our team.
Senior Quality Assurance Tester: My responsibilities encompass leading other Testers in efficient issue reporting, regression, and communication between the Leads and the testers. I also utilize Jira Dashboards and Microsoft Excel to monitor and guide Testers to be more efficient testers on their own. Large scale communication for cross studio playtests is also one of my responsibilities.
Quality Assurance Tester: My main focus with this role was to find and reproduce issues within the game, and then report these issues back to the developers on Jira. Regression on these issues as well as Devtrack task completion and large scale testing also made up the bulk of my time.
Timeline
I started working on this project in September of 2019 as a Quality Assurance Tester and was promoted to a Senior Quality Assurance Tester in May of 2020 and promoted again to Associate Project Lead in March of 2022.
Projects
I started on Black Ops 4 in early 2019 (uncredited) and worked on that until it had Sunset. While it was sunsetting I would also work on Pre-Launch Modern Warfare where I would move to after Black Ops 4 was finished. The release of Warzone was another major part of my career where I stayed for 2 years as a live service QA. After that I was transfered to Vanguard to sunset that project and headed into pre-production for our current live game Modern Warfare III where we are currently releasing new seasons.
Leadership
As I have progressed within the company Leadership has been more and more of a priority. Starting as a Tester leading small groups, moving to a Senior being in charge of a whole team and running-cross studio playtests, and up to Associate QA Project Lead where I work with multiple teams to make sure our testers are working their hardest while also making sure they are are taken care of themselves.
Communication
Communication is crucial to making sure that testing among all of our testers is working effectively as well as making sure testers worries are quelled. As the main contact point for our teammates, my job is to make sure that any questions they may have are answered as well as making sure that all testing is being conveyed in an easily digestible manner. I also must communicate with other studios to make sure any specified requests are met and that our testing is accurate and in line with their creative vision.
Reporting
Utilizing tools within Jira, such as Confluence Boards, Dashboards and Rich Filters, as well as outside such as Devtrack and Excel allow us to gather information on the Updates health as we move towards releasing a new update. Being able to gather this info and relay it's results is an important skill to have.
Testing
As a tester, I would find and report issues with the game. I would test issues from all facets of the game. From menu navigation and missing UI, to clipping or Z-fighting of the objects within the game. With the game still releasing new content, a lot of our testing is with new content not yet released to the public to make sure it is in the best shape when it goes live.
Pre-Launch Experience
I helped provide a lot of pre-launch testing in the months before Modern Warfare released. This meant lots of time experiencing and dealing with crunch as well other challenges present with pre-launch testing. I also was one of the starting managers for our QA division of Modern Warfare III in charge of Multiple modes like Multiplayer and Singleplayer.
JIRA
The main software we use to report and track these issues is JIRA. We write and regress all of our issues on this software to makes sure communication of issues with the game is being monitored on both the QA and Developer side. I create Key Ins, filters, and advanced searches to track our issues and make sure they are all being reported to the right people.
 |  |  |  |  |  |  |
|---|