A Simple Approach for Estimation of Execution Effort of Functional Test Cases

Planning and scheduling of testing activities play a key-role for any independent test team that performs tests for different software systems, pertaining to different development teams. Based on the work experience with several software systems within the scope of one real-world project, we propose an alternative approach that focuses on team efficiency to estimate the execution effort of a test case suite. To assess the validity of the approach data collected on test activity along one year were used. The approach is simpler to use than current methods, requiring less effort to apply; furthermore, it can provide the test team good estimates even using a small amount of data.