A framework for the evaluation of test effort in industrial software development

Sammanfattning: In software engineering there are methods for estimating the required effort for software development. Examples of such techniques are COCOMO (Constructive Cost Model) and FPA (function point analysis). However, these techniques cannot be used to estimate the required effort in carrying out testing. In this report I propose a framework or model based on previous scientific work regarding testing that seeks to merge the efforts needed in executing test cases and that of the required planning and related preliminary work to acquire test effort evaluation for a generic industrial application. In this proposed framework I compute the test execution effort from the complexity of test cases based upon the specification and this result would be used together with figures of the test planning effort to achieve our results. This method of estimating effort shows the amount of time, in man hours and the capacity of the testing team. Time begins when the test analyst starts analyzing specific requirements organizing them into different test levels and roles, the summation of times spent from this time up to the moment that a complete, debugged test script is developed and executed at least once for all requirements. Background work in this thesis gravitates around metrics popularly used in the industry regarding testing and also in software development effort.