8 General Tips on How You can Estimate Testing Time of a Software

For testing a software, several factors play an important role in doing the whole process of testing perfectly and successfully. Proper project test estimation is one of them, which actually helps in building the good relationship with the clients by performing different tasks as per their requirements. Much experience is certainly required to understand how to estimate the software testing efforts. Working on various projects absolutely helps to prepare an estimation of the testing cycle most correctly. Therefore, software test estimation should be accurate and realistic in order to do the whole tasks of testing an application efficiently.

Through this content, I am sharing some key points, which are helpful to prepare good test estimations in a simple manner. Just to make you understand that I will not highlight any standard methods of test estimations like metrics in software testing training here, instead I will put down my experience on how to estimate the testing time of an application with some useful tips.

Important Factors Affecting Estimation of Software's Testing Time and General Tips to Estimate Accurately

1. Consider Buffer Time

For getting better SQA results while estimating the testing time of an application, you need to add some buffer time to your tasks. Do not add unrealistic buffer to it. This will help you in enabling to cope for any delays that may occur during the testing process. The buffer time will also help you in ensuring maximum test coverage as well. For having more knowledge on this, you can go through the online study materials providing by QACampus, which is one of leading software testing training institutes. 

2. Think of Bug Cycle

As the actual test cycle make take more time than estimated, so it must be dependent on the stability of the build in order to avoid this situation. An unstable build may result in needing more time for fixation by the developers. As a result, the time of testing cycle can get extended automatically.

3. Resources Availability for Estimated Period

While estimating the testing time of a software, you should know what resources are available. You must consider all planned leaves of your team members (specifically long leaves) that can be taken by them in the next few weeks or months. Also, you should consider some fixed number of resources for the test cycle. If the number of resources get reduced then the estimation of testing time should be re-visited and updated accordingly.

4. Go to the Estimations Again

Sometimes estimations of testing time of an application can go wrong, so you must re-visit the estimations on frequently basis at initial stages. If it is required to modify the tasks, you should do it.

5. Re-call the Past Experiences and Make Judgements

You should have a learning quality through which you can judge several testing tasks that you have experienced from your past projects. Try to avoid all the difficulties or issues that you faced in earlier projects related to the testing estimation time of a software.

6. Consider the Scope of Project

You should examine the end objectives of the project and match them with your start-up planned scenarios. Take the factors for small and large projects into consideration. Understand that large projects typically consist of designing test scripts, generating test data, setting up test bed and so on. Hence, estimations should be based on all these factors mentioned above for the large projects. Whereas, test cycle for small projects consists of writing of test cases, execution and regression as well.

7. Knowing Your Team

If you know the working abilities of your team members, you can estimate testing tasks more precisely. While having an estimation of software testing, you should take up the fact that all resources may not yield same productivity level.

8. Comment Section

The last but not least tip, you can leave a blank option for commenting on your best estimation techniques that have been used in estimating the testing time of a software.

I am hopeful that this information on how to estimate the testing time of an application accurately will help you in getting your testing tasks done efficiently and successfully.