Quantifying work in Test Automation

5 pts.
Tags:
Automated Testing
Quality assurance
Test Automation
Test scripts
Testing
I would like to know whether there are any methods to quantify the work during the initial phases of Test Automation. During the inittial phases, a lot of effort goes into creation of the shared modules, deciding on the frame work and other things needed for running the test scripts. Projecting only the automated test case count will not look good as the number will be low during these periods. The test metrics need to show all the effort and test case count will not be able to do this.
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Are you referring to a specific product?

or just the general case that you can’t measure what you can’t count?

Assuming that you have some sort of metrics over the system you’re looking at, then take a section and record the time used, then extrapolate.

so, if you have 14000 objects in the entire system, make some executive decisions about chunking into 1000 at a time, and blocks of 100, then decide, record, or just guess at what 100 is, and extrapolate from there, refining all the time as you organise objects to areas, refine the counts, refine the times, and so on.

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  • RobinGoldsmith
    As I discuss in my Managing Test Projects and Estimating and Controlling Testing seminars and related consulting, the key is to treat testing as a project. In this instance, the project is automating tests. A testing project consists of two qualitatively different types of tasks, each of which needs to be identified and estimated using techniques appropriate to the type of task. Test-based tasks incur effort and duration per test of a particular type and then are multiplied by the number of tests of that type to determine total effort and duration. On the other hand, administrative and support tasks are sized based on the characteristics of the task and are not affected by the number of tests. In most testing projects, the administrative and support tasks constitute the bulk of effort and yet often are overlooked in testing project estimates. The tasks the questioner is having trouble quantifying are administrative and support tasks, and they are not a function of the number of tests. They need to be estimated separately from the test-based tasks, such as creating and executing test cases.
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