Speaking as someone who TAed a couple years: I much preferred grading projects to tests.

Projects they had to demo, and they had a published rubric. While it was possible sometimes to play to the rubric, it still meant there was very little work to figure out a grade.

Tests, on the other hand, I had to dig in, understand what they were trying to do, figure out if it worked, and award partial credit. I guess the prof could have done multiple choice to make grading easy, but that has all kinds of problems with actually testing anything.

Yeah, I've done it. Both as a TA and as instructor of record.

The fact that the university doesn't provide adequate staffing is not an excuse for short-changing the students still further.