November 24, 2020 TCO20 QA FINALS RECAP

Despite the world enduring with COVID-19, our TCO finalists were ready to face another challenge at TCO on 21st Of November 2020. This was the 2nd TCO event for the QA track, so many new QA enthusiasts were looking forward to this big event, but due to the pandemic it was conducted virtually.

Yes, this year’s TCO was obviously different as all the finalists competed from the comfort and safety of their own home.  However the pressure and the sportsmanship were reflected in each of the contestant’s faces during the finale. 

We had  total 12 TCO20 QA Finalist, out of them only 8 could make it out for the final event  Namely, akultalwar89, codejam, creeya, mancoolgunda, Payal2514, SATKAN, Subhu and varun22303270. 

Like last time, TCO QA Finals included three phases: regression phase, followed by  bug hunt phase and the challenge phase. The challenge phase is a kind of a peer test where one finalist  validates the bugs raised by another finalist, and earns points according to the validation type. Regression and Bug hunt is the same as any other normal test. 

The finalists were geared up with their tools and videoed live on the Hopin platform.  Each finalist was assigned a proctor and their screens were shared and their voices were recorded.

They started with the Regression challenge for the application called Recruit CRM.  Recruit CRM is an Application Tracking System (ATS) that Topcoder has been using in the background to process Gig Work Applications.  When the admin team decided to use this particular application for the challenge, we had some doubts whether there would be any Bug reported or not. This was indeed a big challenge for our finalist as they were supposed to report only Functional bugs in such a short span of time, but with the raw skills of our finalists,they were able to discover around 68 bugs! After the challenge phase, 32 bugs were reported as Valid.

The challenge became more interesting as akultalwar89 was leading the scoreboard with a large number of bugs, however, after the bug challenge phase, codejam flipped the board and defied all expectations.  Codejam made an undeniable statement – he is ready to take down any competitor and he is now our official TCO20 QA champion!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mf5V1n0giYc&t=1502s

Many thanks to our admins, crazyk, ksmacleod99 and Team, who were continuously administrating and making the event more lively by adding the introductory session which helped build closer bonds with the members, something that was missed due to the event being virtual. Another thank you to varun22303270 for his live interaction and sharing his insights about the event and Topcoder platform.

Biggest thanks to our copilot and review team – drasticdpk, nithyaasworld,winterflame.  Their attention to detail and objectiveness is a great example of the talent at Topcoder and it was a pleasure to work with all of them.

Finally, finger crossed, in next TCO21, we get to meet each other in person and we get to welcome new faces for the challenge.