Register Now

iPLAN

A Tool Driven Approach For Software Test- Effort Estimation
Narasimha Murthy M. R, Senior Consultant, Wipro


Narasimha Murthy M. R

Estimating for software test effort is one of the most difficult and critical activities in a software development project. Without proper test-effort estimations, time and resource allocation in the project can not be done in a judicious manner and this may lead to undesirable loss in the business. In a typical SDLC based project, software testing effort encompass the efforts for the activities depictedin Figure 1.

 

 

Each testing phase in the project will comprise the above set of activities. Therefore it is essential to be able to estimate test effort for each testing phase.

With the present estimation techniques, net testing effort estimate is arrived at as a standard percentage of total project development effort. Experienced domain experts, development team members and IV&V team members work out estimates which will be based on the past project experience and data from similar projects. The true nature of the application under test will not be scientifically characterized and hence the estimates are only broad based approximations.

Therefore there is a stringent need to:

  • Employ a methodology that considers the true characteristics of the Application Under Test (AUT) and which is reliable and consistent to apply
  • Have an exclusive framework to estimate testing—effort, individually, for Acceptance, System, Software Integration and Unit — testing phases
  • Provide an easy handle for the estimator to use, in the form of a tool, with a GUI and facility for estimation—report generation
  • Give due consideration for the factors that can have a strong influence on the estimation, such as:
    • Technical complexity of the AUT
    • Environmental complexity of the AUT

to lessen risks and be more “realistic”

A framework has been proposed with due consideration for all the above needs, to estimate the net testing effort, explicitly, for the Acceptance, System, Software Integration and Unit — testing phases in a given project. The proposed framework is based on a set of four tools paired into two sets. One set is dedicated to address test effort estimation for Acceptance Testing and System Testing, while the other for Software Integration Testing and Unit Testing.

 
Speaker Profile:
Narasimha Murthy M.R. is working as a Senior Consultant in the Testing Services business unit for the Telecom Service Provider practice in Wipro Technologies, Bangalore. He has an extensive experience of 18+ years in the areas of software application — design, development and testing while involved in various projects in the domains of Embedded Electronics Systems and Telecommunications. His main areas of interest include - Test architectures and Test frameworks, Test automation, Test processes optimization, Testing tools, Methodologies for improving the QA processes etc. He also has led various software engineering projects. He has published 04 papers in the area of software testing and software engineering at various international software conferences.