- Phase 4: Production and QA
- Establishing Guidelines
- Setting File Structure
- Slicing and Optimization
- Creating HTML Templates and Pages
- Implementing Light Scripting
- Populating Pages
- Integrating Backend Development
- Understanding Quality Assurance Testing
- Creating a QA Plan
- Prioritizing and Fixing Bugs
- Conducting a Final Check
- Phase 4 Summary
Prioritizing and Fixing Bugs
Decide what needs to be fixed immediately. These are the showstoppers the glaring errors. Continue your list and prioritize the remainder of the fixes with headings such as showstoppers, high priority, medium priority, and low priority. Understand that some bugs may be unfixable because they are end-user dependent. If you can't re-create the bug, mark it as such. They might be due to end-user browser settings [6.15]. Depending on the time left before launch and the level of perfection that is necessary at launch, plan for prelaunch fixes and post-launch fixes alike. Postlaunch fixes should happen in an iterative fashion.
Figure 6.15. An image glitch (top) shows up on AOL 4.0 browsers during the QA process, but randomly only on some laptops. End-user preferences setting were to blame: Unchecking "Use compressed images" and then dumping the browser cache remedied the glitch and displayed the image correctly (bottom). End-user-caused bugs are largely out of QA control.
QA Budget Comparisons by Overall Project Budget Range and Technical Level
Light/Informal QA |
For projects with budgets under $30,000, estimate the QA budget at 1% to 3% of project cost. Technical level: light. |
Semiformal QA |
For projects with budgets ranging between $30,000 and $70,000, estimate the QA budget at 5% of project cost. Technical level: moderate. |
Formal QA |
For projects with budgets over $70,000, estimate the QA budget at 10% to 20% of project cost. Technical level: moderate to complex.. |
Note
For projects at or under the $10,000 budget mark, a mere $100 worth of time and resources will not work. You do need to go through the entire site.